Academic literature on the topic 'Slum dwellers'

The relationship between knowledge and development is of growing importance in development theory and practice. Despite the growth in interest, there are significant issues that have not been explored in detail. I will focus on some of these issues, including: the ways in which knowledge and learning are conceived and created in development; the ways in which knowledge travels; the opportunities for learning between 'North' and 'South'; and the political spaces that are created through different kinds of knowledge. To explore these issues, I examine a network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) called Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI). This network seeks to reconfigure the governance of urban poverty reduction strategies and encourage poor' people to re-think their own capacities and potentials. In particular, I draw on interview-based fieldwork conducted on one key member of this group, the Indian Alliance based in Mumbai. I critically examine some of the possibilities and challenges of various forms of 'travelling knowledges'. These are strategies that have travelled through exchanges, wherein groups of poor people travel from one settlement to another to share stories and experiences with other poor people in what amounts to an informal 'training' process. By examining exchanges between SDI and groups in the UK, I critically discuss the broader potential in development to move beyond barriers of North and South that limit learning. I adopt a broadly post-rationalist approach to the concerns in the thesis. Through this, I argue the importance of considering knowledge and learning as produced through relations of near and far, social and material, and as driven by routines and practices. A post-rationalist approach helps us to understand and appreciate the importance of geography for knowledge and learning in the SDI network. This approach draws attention to power. It encourages a critical consciousness that is alert to the kinds of knowledge conceived for development, and that recognizes the various ways in which different knowledges help create different types of politics. A post-rationalist approach also cautions against conceptions of knowledge and learning that risk marginalizing geography and power in development more generally. The thesis demonstrates the need to give further consideration of how knowledge is conceived as a development strategy, and what the potential possibilities and pitfalls of travelling knowledges are.

Poverty reduction and Education for All (EFA) are important policy issues in many developing countries as they are both Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As the existing literature suggests, education positively influences poverty reduction, while poverty, or low income, adversely affects the quality and quantity of education. Accordingly, if education fails to facilitate poverty reduction, the following generation's schooling is likely to be adversely affected, thus perpetuating a vicious education–poverty circle. It was against such a background, and employing a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis, that this study investigated the relationship between education and multidimensional poverty at an individual as well as household level, and the influence of deprivation on children's education, in the context of the slum in Delhi, India. The thesis reveals that education – particularly primary and middle schooling – enhances the earnings of male slum dwellers in particular, the overwhelming majority of whom suffer from informality and instability of employment. It also emerges that education plays an important role in the ability to participate with confidence in the public sphere. At the household level, education proves to have a positive association with monetary poverty, but a higher level of education per se does not necessarily facilitate escape from non-monetary poverty. In such a nexus of poverty and education, the thesis found that household wealth in association with social group and migration status tends to be positively correlated with child schooling, education expenditure, and basic learning. There may be a chance of escaping poverty through education, but such a likelihood is limited for those households that are underprivileged in terms of caste and religion owing to slow progress in basic learning, as well as migrant households due to lack of access to schooling. The thesis concludes by proposing some education policies drawn from the major findings of the study that may be implemented in the Indian slum context.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2000.<br>Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-201).<br>This dissertation analyzes the slum redevelopment strategy introduced by the state government of Maharashtra (India) in its capital city, Mumbai (Bombay). The strategy involves demolishing the existing slums and building on the same sites at a higher density, new, medium rise apartment-blocks including entirely cross-subsidized housing for the original slum dwellers. Slum redevelopment is distinctly different from the two prevalent conventional strategies with respect to slums in developing countries - slum clearance and slum upgrading. Interestingly, the strategy appears to enjoy considerable support of slum dwellers, NGOs, private developers and politicians. The study focuses on a single slum redevelopment case - the Markandeya Cooperative Housing Society (MCHS) - to show how the state government amended the land development regulations to enhance the potential land values and allowed the slum dwellers to share in the high development values. This analysis of the role of the State in promoting a new housing strategy and providing crucial support in implementation contributes to our understanding of housing provision policy in three ways. First, it provides insights into slum redevelopment as an alternative housing strategy. It analyzes the problems faced and the solutions innovated in the implementation of this strategy. It argues that despite slum redevelopment's shortcomings, the strategy may be superior to other alternatives, especially if the State can provide implementation support. Second, it identifies nontraditional issues, often overlooked in housing improvement that may help make slum upgrading programs more successful. Contrary to the conventional focus only on private property rights, the dissertation argues for policy to be based on a differentiated view of property rights (including common property rights) that also considers the property values, the physical structure of the property-holdings and the interplay among these issues. Third, the study reveals the complexities involved in housing production for low-income groups and demonstrates that enabling housing provision, even with the participation of private sector agents, requires an active government role. Paradoxically, enabling may require four levels of seeming contradictions - both decentralization and centralization; both demand-driven and supply driven development; both private as well as public investment; and both deregulation and new regulations.<br>by Vinit Mukhija.<br>Ph.D.

This thesis is concerned with the housing and service needs of the poor (slum dwellers) in Bombay and how they are articulated and satisfied. It discusses how the poor perceive the constraints on slum servicing and improvement, their involvement in community organizations, and the role the community and its leaders play in influencing state action. Since housing and servicing issues directly impinge on the interests of politicians and bureaucrats as well as on those of the poor, patterns of provision mirror closely the nature of the relationship between the poor and how political and administrative power operates at various levels. Chapter 1 provides the research aims and objectives while Chapter 2 reviews the literature on community participation. Chapter 3 on Bombay places housing development in context and also serves as background study to the thesis. This research studies three different slum settlements housing migrants to Bombay. Two surveys of these three slum settlements were carried out, involving interviews with 135 households. Chapter 4 describes the characteristics of these households, while chapters 5, 6, and 7 give the arguments of the thesis. It is shown that, despite an established system of representative community organisations and a pro-participation rhetoric in bureaucratic discourse, most slum dwellers are excluded from participating in decision-making. A patron-client relationship exists between politicians, bureaucrats and community leaders, both in determining the community leaders' power as well as the level of services and physical benefits that he/she could win for the slum community. Leaders are generally better educated, better employed, more prosperous and highly motivated than most of their community. The NGO in this study has acted mainly as intermediary between the government and the slum-dwellers.

Since rapid urban growth forces poor households to settle in highly congested urban areas, slum dwellers are increasingly vulnerable due to a multiplicity of hazards rooted in the environment, nature, health, society and the urban economy. Hitherto, the understanding of urban risks and the vulnerability of inhabitants has been an underrepresented subject in urban planning. The different reasoning and rationales of slum dwellers, municipal authorities and other actors provide each with different perceptions of risks. This study focuses on the communication of urban risks between two slum communities and the Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad by examining endeavours in slum improvement and more responsive urban governance. In using a conceptual framework that synthesises socio-cultural approaches to risk, communication theories and collaborative planning theory, the thesis points out the deficiencies and potentials of risk communication in long-term urban development planning. Currently urban risk management is not recognised as an integrated, cross-sectoral topic by the Municipal Corporation. Due to the structural fabric of the administration and the lack of capacity and guidance, the notion of risk is based on conventional approaches to disaster risk management with responsibilities spread across various departments. By contrast, slum dwellers have a much more integrated understanding of the micro-level risk conditions in which they live and work. The findings of this study suggest that a meaningful two-way communication process can only take place if the interaction of stakeholders is understood in terms of human relationships that go beyond techno-bureaucratic co-ordination and the prevalent notion of mono-directional communication. This concept of communication is underpinned by values such as trust, fairness, credibility and justice in interaction in the context of urban governance. The research approach and the findings suggest areas for improved policy making and further research. The outcome of the research especially contributes to a better understanding of urban risk situations in the social and cultural contexts of poor communities in India. Hence this investigation may be viewed as a potential basis for generating practical guidelines for mitigation policies and their links to urban governance.

This thesis seeks to review Urban Sustainability in cities of the Developing South within the broader spectrum of Sustainable Development. Notably, the Developing South has for many years struggled to embrace Sustainability in its general terms: in part, because of the fragile institutions that cannot be counted on to uphold sustainability in the truest sense of the word; and in part because of the numerous challenges that often distract any attempt to prioritize Sustainable Development. Sustainability then becomes an option in the midst of other options, rather than an option that should affect all other options. Narrowing it down further to matters urban makes it even stranger in a host of cities across the Developing South. It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine in depth the contextual challenges that have invariably stood in the way of Sustainable Development across the Developing South. While it may not be practically possible in a four-month study to offer outright solutions or recommendations that could address these challenges in entirety, this study nevertheless has endeavoured to stay true to the realities that are often ignored whenever challenges of Sustainable Development are mentioned on global platforms. Among these realities is the reality of slum presence in most cities of the Developing South that existentially complicates any equation for urban sustainability ever formulated to provide a way out or forward for these cities. State governments understand this too well, and so do Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and international organizations alike involved in the crusade for improved living conditions for city resident, and in particular slum residents. Yet the State governments have never been as resolute in their quest for slum free cities. The question then remains: exactly what are the sustainable approaches for this noble cause? While the State governments have over the years insisted on enforcing conventional approaches (that include forced evictions, relocations and/ or redevelopment); one international network, however, thinks and responds differently to slum situations. The network is Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI). It is considerably this network of slum dwellers and their undeniably innovative approach to urban sustainability and inclusivity that largely frames the direction and general content of this study. Specifically, the methodology adopted in the study is one of a Case study - which in this case is SDI; and two separate Cases, namely Railway Relocation Action Plan (RAP) in Nairobi, Kenya and slum Re-blocking project in Joe Slovo, Cape Town, South Africa, respectively - as typical cases that captures in large part the enormous contribution that SDI is making towards inclusive and sustainable cities in the Developing South. In the discussion part, however, the study introduces Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as a comparative methodology to SDI’s approach. SSM particularly benefits from LUMAS model and Social Learning – both key components that potentially reserve a dynamic capacity to enriching SDI’s approach as a future reference methodology for urban sustainability and inclusivity.

This doctoral thesis explores slum dwellers’ decisions regarding their ways of making a living. The different aspects of earning one’s life in a poverty situation have been mostly studied from the perspective of livelihood assets, the circulation of information about opportunities, the management of skills and relationships, and the affirmation of personal significance in carrying out one’s livelihood strategy. By contrast, this research investigates the decisions behind making a living, by looking at the relative influence of 1) the norms shaping the slum dwellers’ environment, 2) slum dwellers’ individual intentions, 3) slum dwellers’ motivation to comply with others’ behaviours, and 4) the narratives slum dwellers build around the rationality of their choices. In an attempt to address the knowledge gap concerning the interactions between decision-making and poverty, the research documents and analyses the interplay of individual and social factors affecting decision-making processes in the Thapathali slum settlement of Kathmandu, Nepal. The research shows that through their discourse, slum dwellers relay normative beliefs, that is, beliefs which are influenced by norms or definitions of what is acceptable. It is found that these normative beliefs have a partially prescriptive role in determining how slum dwellers make decisions. Most unexpectedly, while slum dwellers’ interpretations of norms produce normative beliefs that are difficult to revise such as valuation neglect – the dispositions of slum dwellers to strive for further opportunities being limited by the collective interpretation of their constrained situation –, the research demonstrates that particular norms such as religious and caste-related norms create a room for manoeuvre as slum dwellers interpret these norms while serving their individual interests, therefore shifting the boundaries of the collectively accepted norms. Driven by one’s will to ‘opt out’ from caste discrimination, some slum dwellers instrumentalise their religious affiliation and convert to Christianity to overcome discrimination and access further benefits within the community, while others make use of their caste-related skills to enhance their array of opportunities. The research concludes that decisions related to making a living in situations of poverty are primarily characterised by the volatility of the normative beliefs behind these decisions: slum dwellers recurrently interpret and re-interpret norms in an attempt to best align their behaviours with their individual intentions and the collective reasons given for certain behaviours within the community. As such, it is the study of the production of normative beliefs that best achieves the unpacking of decision processes and decision practices related to making a living in the Thapathali slum settlement.