As cities grew and business parks dispersed due to inefficient costs, people moved to the suburbs. Thus, retail, logistics, home maintenance and other businesses followed demand patterns. Municipalities have used investments in infrastructure and urban planning to allocate work, housing, green space, retail, schools and population density. Affordable public transport in cities like New York, London and Paris allowed the poor to reach areas where they could earn a living. Public and municipal housing projects have cleaned up slums and provided more sanitation than before the 1950s. [265] In India, notification or legal designation as a slum settlement is essential to government recognition of slums and aims to grant residents rights to safe drinking water and sanitation over time. But many communities with clear slum characteristics are never reported (Subbaraman et al., 2012); Delhi, for example, has not reported any new slums since 1994 (Bhan, 2013). However, the UN definition implies legality and would likely identify all deprived areas, not just those recognized by the government as slums, which would likely lead to disagreements over the distribution and absolute number of slum dwellers in India. Some city and state officials have simply tried to clear the slums. [234] [235] This slum treatment strategy is rooted in the fact that slums usually start illegally on foreign land ownership and are not recognized by the state. Since the slum began violating someone else`s property rights, residents have no legal rights to the land.
[236] [237] By 2030, half the population of low- and middle-income countries will live in urban areas, and poverty and inequality will increase in these contexts. Slums are a means of conceptualizing and characterizing urban disadvantage, but there are many definitions of what constitutes a slum. This paper presents four different definitions of slums used in India alone and shows that assessing the distribution and extent of urban deprivation depends on how it is characterized, as well as on the association of slums with common indicators of child health. Using data from the 2005-2006 National Family and Health Survey of India, two indicators of slum housing integrated into the survey and two indicators constructed from the household questionnaire are compared with descriptive statistics and linear regression models of height and weight Z-scores. The results highlight a tension between international and local definitions of slums and highlight the importance of improving the empirical representation of slum dweller and urban dweller dynamics. Another type of urbanization does not involve economic growth, but economic stagnation or low growth, which mainly contributes to slum growth in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. This type of urbanization is associated with high unemployment, insufficient financial resources and inconsistent urban planning policies. [65] In these areas, a 1% increase in the urban population leads to a 1.84% increase in slum prevalence. [66] Initially, slums are usually located in the least desirable areas near the city, which are under state or philanthropic confidence or religious ownership, or have no clear land title. In cities above mountainous terrain, slums start on hard-to-reach slopes or start at the foot of flood-prone valleys, often hidden from the view of the city centre but close to a natural water source. [112] In towns near lagoons, marshes, and rivers, they begin on banks or on stilts above the water or dry riverbed; On flat land, slums begin on land unsuitable for agriculture, near urban dumps, next to railway tracks,[113] and other undesirable places.
To examine the impact of slums, this paper focuses on an indicator of human and economic well-being, namely child health (Strauss and Thomas, 1998). We use child height to study the effects of past epidemiological and nutritional environment (Deaton, 2007) and weight to study acute and current health and nutritional stressors. About half of Indian children are malnourished and, in particular, smaller body size for old age has been associated with reduced cognitive and educational performance (Hoddinott et al., 2011), as well as lower wages and labour market productivity over the life course (Case and Paxson, 2008). Data from India suggest that economic growth has failed to improve child nutrition (Deaton and Dréze, 2009) and that nearly half of children under five have atrophied (UNICEF, 2013). Malnutrition not only directly affects children`s physical and cognitive growth, but is also implicated in deaths from infectious diseases such as malaria, pneumonia and measles, making the underlying disease responsible for more than 20 percent of the country`s disease burden (Gragnolati et al., 2005). The proportions of dwellings called slums after each possible combination of two definitions (Table 5) indicate significant differences in the overlap between the four definitions. Specifically, while 90% of children designated as living in slums according to the UN definition are designated as such according to the committee`s definition, only 54% of children designated as living in slums according to the UN definition are designated as such according to the NFHS definition. Figure 2 shows a Venn diagram of the overlap between different slum names. Although these results are not displayed proportionally, the Venn diagram provides additional support for the variability of overlap between definitions. These descriptive findings should provide food for thought for researchers, policymakers, and public health practitioners who might view slum housing as conceptually and/or empirically simple. Some Governments have begun to view slums as a potential opportunity for urban development through slum upgrading.
This approach was inspired in part by the theoretical writings of John Turner in 1972. [244] [245] The approach aims to improve the slum with basic infrastructure such as sanitation, drinking water, safe electricity distribution, paved roads, stormwater drainage system, and bus/metro stops. [246] The assumption behind this approach is that if slums receive basic services and property security—that is, slums will not be destroyed and slum dwellers will not be displaced—then residents will rebuild their own homes, push their slum communities to live better, and over time, attract investment from government organizations and businesses. Turner argued not to demolish apartments, but to improve the environment: If governments can rid existing slums of unhealthy human waste, polluted water and garbage, and muddy, unlit alleys, they don`t have to worry about slums. [247] The “squatters” have demonstrated a great sense of organization in terms of land management and will maintain the infrastructure provided. [247] Slum formation is closely linked to urbanization. [56] In 2008, more than 50% of the world`s population lived in urban areas. In China, for example, it is estimated that the population living in urban areas will increase by 10% within a decade, in line with current urbanization rates. [57] UN-Habitat reports that 43% of the urban population in developing countries and 78% of the population in least developed countries live in slums. [7] Table 7 shows multivariate models of the relationship between slum settlement and both health outcomes, but includes a variety of control variables. Four regression models are represented, one for each of the four slum definitions.
When all covariates are included, the only statistically significant indicator of slums (at the 5 per cent level) associated with child height for age is the United Nations indicator. In particular, children living in slums as characterized by the UN definition have, on average, a Z-score age size 0.177 (about 11% of a standard deviation) lower than that of their non-slum co-residents. The results are similar for weight by age. When all covariates are included in the model, the UN definition is the only slum indicator that is statistically significantly associated with children`s height and weight. Slums are often among the places vulnerable to natural disasters such as landslides[146] and floods. [147] [148] In cities on mountainous terrain, slums start on hard-to-reach slopes or start at the foot of flood-prone valleys, often hidden from view of the city center, but near a natural water source. [112] In towns near lagoons, marshes, and rivers, they begin on banks or on stilts above the water or dry riverbed; On flat land, slums begin on land unsuitable for agriculture, near urban dumps, next to railway tracks,[113] and other avoided and unwanted places.
