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0015 1947 Article A007 en
0015 1947 Article A007 en
This article sketches the argument for upgrading or improving developing countries will increase by
slums and squatter settlements, and describes Bank assisted some 1.3 billion over the next 25 years.
projects in Zambia and Indonesia to illustrate pioneering and If present trends are permitted to con-
innovative solutions to the squatting problem. The author tinue, 75 per cent will be slum-squatter
dwellers.
indicates areas which need more attention, to increase the In spite of the near intolerable environ-
benefits of upgrading. mental conditions in which they live,
squatters have up to now shown a sur-
Callisto Eneas Madavo prisingly high degree of popular initiative
and cohesion. Some experts on urbaniza-
In developing countries, us in some de- veloping world between one fourth and tion have suggested, and rightly so, that
veloped countries, rapid urban growth one half of the urban population lives the newcomers to urban areas who often
has been accompanied by slums and in overcrowded, deteriorating, and cen- constitute the squatter-slum population,
squatter settlements. Where property trally located slum neighborhoods, or in are really a group of "pioneers" and
rights are firmly enforced and squatting mushrooming, unserviced shantytowns builders of a new order in their societies
effectively controlled, people are forced on the periphery. In 1975, it was esti- who facilitate the transition from rural
to live in overcrowded dwellings and the mated that at least 200 million persons to urban life in many ways. Not only do
result is rundown neighborhoods and lived in almost intolerable conditions of they have to acquire skills and attitudes
housing conditions—slums. Where there physical congestion and squalor and their much different from those existing in the
is no effective property control, people rate of growth was roughly twice the rural areas of their origin, but their moti-
often invade land that they do not own, rate of overall urban growth and about vations and behavioral patterns often
and build their own dwellings on it, usu- four times the rate of total population change. In nations where ethnic divisions
ally without services, thus creating squat- increase. According to projections by are pronounced, the bringing together of
ter settlements. In most cities in the de- the United Nations, urban population in people in the cities often helps to weld
D. Hanrloud / World Health organization
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