Can ‘slums’ save the planet?

A perspective from the so-called ‘global south’

Benjamín Peralta P.

According to Hillary Angelo and David Waschmuth (2020), since 1970, there has been an
“underlying transition in global urban policy and discourse from the city as a sustainability
problem to the city as a sustainability solution”(Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020). To support this
idea, the authors discuss three historical developments: sprawl, informal settlements, and
climate change. In this essay, I will discuss about informal settlements, challenging the idea
that there has been a twist in the global discourse from clearing and upgrading “slums” towards
taking them as models for “sustainable living” (Ross, 2014 in Angelo et al. 2020), and even
considering them as means to save the planet (Brand, 2010 in Angelo et al. 2020). To do so,
firstly a conceptual framework will be defined to accurately address the discussion of
informality and its characteristics in Latin America, particularly in Chile. Secondly, by
reviewing the literature, I will conceptualize the recent history and current state of informal
settlements, to finally discuss mistaken assumptions behind Brand’s statement about ‘saving
the planet’.

Regarding informal settlements, the authors explain the changes with a global perspective as
follows: “Through the beginning of the 21st century, the main strategies for coping with
informal settlements were to clear or ‘upgrade’'them (Anand and Rademacher, 2011; Burra,
2005; Mayo et al., 1986), in both cases in the name of ‘development’. But even as informal
settlements were being widely cited as environmental problems and international development
touted as a solution, a second narrative – of informal settlements as vibrant, innovative forms
of a potentially sustainable urbanism – was growing. 2010 marked something of a watershed in
this regard. In contrast to some of its earlier work, UN-Habitat’s (2010) report, Cities for All:
Bridging the Urban Divide, changed its tone, describing urbanization as a ‘positive force for
transformation’ in the Global South and noting that ‘too many countries have adopted an
ambivalent or hostile attitude to the urbanization process, with negative consequences’ (2010:
26). That same year, Stewart Brand (2010), the American environmental visionary and founder
of the Whole Earth Catalogue, wrote an article entitled ‘How slums can save the planet’, in
which he described informal settlements as ‘unexpectedly green’ by virtue of their extreme
density.”(Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020).
In this extract, citing several sources, the authors highlight the twist in the global
discourse toward the idea of the potential benefits that informal settlements may present in the
context of sustainable urban development, this is an accurate representation of the evolution of
the global agenda related to housing. However, regarding the current perspective, there is a mix
of terminology that weakens the main idea about these virtues. The use of slums as a synonym
for informal settlements, and global south as a way to refer to all the territories where these
settlements are located, present a high level of abstraction, which makes it difficult to grasp as
a real and precise argument. Before starting the discussion about the ‘values’ of informal
settlements, it is necessary to define a conceptual framework to correctly comprehend these
phenomena.

Conceptual framework I: Defining the ‘global south’

To begin with, it is necessary to cope with the problem of addressing ‘slums’ and ‘informal
settlements’ in the ‘global south’ as generic terms, without dealing with the specificity of the
different realities that create these kinds of settlements, and leaving aside the inherent issues
related to the term “global south”. This is a problem that surpasses Angelo and Wachsmuth's
article, as we can note that decades ago the United Nations (UN) was one of the first
organizations to institutionalize the term ‘slums’ in an attempt to encompass millions of people
who live in informality around the world (UN, 2000), while at the same time, there is an ongoing
discussion among scholars about the theoretical binarism between ‘northern’ and ‘southern’
theorists.
Regarding this last topic, it is well known that the “global south” does not refer to a
geographical location of the southern hemisphere (although this vagueness gives a hint of how
undefined this term can be), where in reality comprehends the territories that are not included
in the “global north”, understanding this last one as De Satgé and Watson (2018) precisely
define, “the advanced capitalist economies of the world”, mostly located in the northern
territories. Furthermore, following the authors' analysis, as southern theorists1 claim, the degree
of abstraction of this concept difficult to thoroughly understand the specificity of cities and
regions, while at the same time, they argue that ‘place matters’, questioning the origin, methods,
and process of knowledge creation. Although this discussion may exceed the scope of this
essay, it supports the idea that within the analysis of public policies and general discussions of
informal settlement’s contributions to sustainable urbanism and planning, we must clearly
define a framework for the specific realities of diverse territories, if not, there is a risk -as it has
happened many times in the past decades- of assuming that planning strategies can be
successfully exported and imported between different regions of the world, with significant
social, economic, and cultural differences.
For all of the above (and acknowledging the author’s education and research context in
Chile) that this essay will be focused on Latin American informal settlements (a term that,
together with slums, will be examined below), with a specific emphasis on Chilean
campamentos, and their potential local contributions to sustainable urban development.

Conceptual framework II: Slums or informal settlements?

As mentioned before, the UN is one of the organizations that brought back to life and
institutionalized the term slums2 in the Millennium Declaration (UN, 2000), later giving an
operative definition of physical features to measure and monitor them in “The Challenges of
Slums”(UN-Habitat, 2003), and finally being widely spread in the book “Planet of Slums”
(Davis, 2006). This concept aims to encompass the diversity of ‘informal’ settlements around
the globe in a set of physical-legal characteristics: overcrowding and high density, lack of basic
services, substandard housing, or illegal and inadequate building structures, among others (UN-
Habitat, 2003). However, as De Castro states (2018), this definition, on one hand, reduces the
slums only to a material cause, and on the other hand, oversimplifies a diversity of complex
phenomena into one single term. Moreover, the author delves into an epistemological problem
of the term arguing that the concept merges ‘nominalist’ and ‘realistic’ perceptions, where
slums aspire to represent the physical reality of specific settlements, while -in reality- it is a
representation of a set of values of the UN. Therefore, and similarly to the global south, the
term slums lack the specificity that the discussion around informal settlements requires.
Having discarded the term slums lead us to analyse the use of informal settlements. The
Oxford dictionary is quite eloquent to define ‘settlement’ as the process of people making their
homes in a place, however, how can we define informality? In the context of this essay,
informality’s definition aligns with Ananya Roy’s (2005) ideas: to discuss about informality,

1
It’s worth noting that even though the term can be quite controversial, De Satgé and Watson still use the
adjective ‘southern’ to address the theorists.
2
In “The Challenges of Slums” (2003), the UN mentions that the term was originally used during the 1820s in
the London cant to identify the poorest quality housing and neighbourhoods with high criminal activity.
especially related to policies, it’s necessary to overcome the dichotomy between two sectors,
formal and informal, being the first one defined by the state and its set of rules, and the second
one being outside the formal realm, in a state of exception3. The author suggests that the
informal and formal sectors are highly interconnected, informality is rather a “series of
transactions that connect different economies and spaces to one another”. It is a matter of
“wealth distribution and ownership and the kind of markets that work in our cities” (Roy, 2005).
In the case of Latin America, is necessary to acknowledge that informality is a significant mode
of urbanization, and it is not always directly related to poverty, therefore reinforces the idea that
informality cannot be separated from the formal sector, but it must be treated as a particular
way of urbanization that responds to the social, economic, and cultural realities of the region.
It is thus more accurate to use the term informal settlements rather than slums.

Informal settlements in Latin America: Chilean campamentos

Villas miseria in Argentina; favelas, morros, and cortiço in Brazil, tugurios, solares in Perú;
barrio pirata or clandestino in Colombia; and campamentos in Chile, are -among others- all
different forms of addressing informal settlements across Latin America (LA). Although they
may have significant differences, they are all -to some degree- the result of a massive migration
from rural areas of people looking for new opportunities in the city during the XX century. A
phenomenon that gained complexity with the international migrations in the region of the last
decades. LA and the Caribbean are considered the most urbanized regions in the world, reaching
81,2% of the population living in cities, and projecting an increase to 87,8% by 2050. Currently,
around 17% of the urban population in LA and the Caribbean resides in 6 ‘mega cities’
(metropolises with more than 10 million inhabitants), Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Río de Janeiro,
São Paulo, Lima, and Ciudad de México, and some other cities with more than 5 million
inhabitants, like Santiago de Chile and Caracas, yet fifty years ago, they were no cities with
more than 10 million inhabitants (Yunis & Peralta, 2022). Even though the number of informal
settlements in some LA countries was decreasing (mostly due to eradication and upgrading
policies), after the COVID pandemic, and understanding that poverty is not equivalent to
informal settlements, the situation worsened significantly due to a series of diverse factors. As
an example, in Chile, from 2019 to 2020, the number of families living in campamentos
increased by 79% (TECHO-Chile et al., 2021), a major rise considering that in the last decades,
the number was stable and at some points decreasing.
Regarding housing policies, in Chile, since the 1990s, there has been a general strategy
based on ‘demand subsidy’, where the state would give vouchers to poor families that couldn’t
access to a house in the formal market. With this voucher, the beneficiaries would buy houses
privately developed as ‘social housing’. This strategy aimed to decrease the number of people
living in campamentos, while at the same time trying to promote investments in the housing
sector. For two decades, this policy was very ‘successful’ in providing ‘formal’ housing to
Chilean families, which even encouraged other LA countries to import the ‘Chilean model’
(Amarilla Riveros, 2018). However, this policy, by trying to solve the quantitative housing
deficit, left aside the qualitative deficit, producing severe problems related to socio-spatial
segregation (Rodríguez & Sugranyes, 2004). The prioritization of profit for the companies led
to developing housing projects on cheap land, disconnected from the cities. This eventually
produced (again) an increase in the housing deficit, both qualitative and quantitative, which has
a direct impact on the number of campamentos. Thankfully, current housing policies have a
wider perspective on the issue and are slowly incorporating various strategies to precisely
respond to the diversity of necessities in the country.
3
The author delves into this term arguing that the state determines which forms of informality will thrive and
which ones will not.
 As for the conceptualization and perception of informal settlements in Chile, it has a
more turbulent history. During Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, and considering that
campamentos are places of self-organization that, in the 1970s were breeding grounds for
opposition groups, the regime defined a very strict (and violent) strategy to eradicate informal
settlements and re-locate them in the periphery of the cities. The idea was to hide everything
that was outside the ‘formal’ realm. During this period, the concept of poverty was
systematically used to refer to the campamentos, visualizing, orienting, and representing a
‘governable population’, giving the possibility to homogenize and depoliticize the inhabitants
of informal settlements. This way of defining informal settlements was later consolidated by
democratic governments in a strategy to focus the problem on a ‘passive demand’ of housing
over political demands and confrontation (Abufhele, 2019), however, as we will analyse below,
campamentos are still places of self-organization, collaboration, and social struggle, a
perspective that is increasingly growing in society.

General characteristics of campamentos

Campamentos, like many informal settlements around the world, are considerably dynamic in
what refers to the physical environment and its users. The Chilean Housing and Urbanism
Ministry (MINVU), as a way of being able to measure and legislate accordingly, defined
campamentos as “precarious settlements of 8 or more households living in irregular possession
of land, lacking at least 1 of the 3 basic services (electricity, drinking water and sewage system),
and whose dwellings form a defined socio-territorial unit” (MINVU, 2019). Nevertheless, a
complementary definition by Hanne Marcelo et al. (2019) expands the concept stating that these
are human settlements with a high concentration of poverty and housing precariousness that is
spatially expressed, where there is high insecurity and health issues, and whose dwellers are
usually socially vulnerable families who struggle with land use insecurity due to the irregularity
of the location. Additionally, it can be said that campamentos are self-built, without safety
standards (both structural and fire resistant), using mostly timber or bricks and metal sheets
(fig. 1). For heating, most people use coal, oil or wood stoves, and some other electric heating,
which presents a high risk of fire due to an irregular connection to the electrical system.

Fig. 1: a campamento in Chile. Source: https://www.elmostrador.cl/destacado/2022/05/31/crisis-habitacional-en-chile-una-

bomba-de-mecha-corta/
They are typically located close to areas with services and job opportunities. This could be
either in the periphery of the cities where there are agricultural job openings, or closer to higher-
income areas of the city, where the inhabitants could participate in the urban economy (Brain
Valenzuela et al., 2010).
Although self-organization is related to subjective elements, like leadership, solidarity,
shared experiences, etc, organizations within campamentos are naturally and commonly bred.
Neighbourhood’s associations, sports clubs, comités de allegados (commitee of people at risk
of being homeless), youth centres, ollas communes (communal open kitchens), and elderly
centres are some of the associations that can be found in informal settlements. This allows them
to work on social and cultural improvement and organize themselves to choose representatives
that can work towards a definitive solution (Gallegos, 2006). Furthermore, when applying for
a ‘social house’ the process becomes easier when there is an organization of applicants. In some
cases, the inhabitants can negotiate and reach an agreement to place their future houses in the
same location as the informal settlement, therefore maintaining their social and labour
networks. This is why they are usually located in areas where it would be impossible to afford
a house in the traditional market. However, with the scarcity of well-located land, a lot of
campamentos inhabitants won’t find another option than locate themselves in high-risk areas,
exposed to landslides, floodings, wildfires, etc.(Calderón & Miranda, 2018).

Saving the planet?

After analysing the high degree of abstraction of the idea that now informal settlements are
perceived as potential resources of sustainable urbanism globally, it can be argued that indeed
the discourse has a different tone to address informal settlements, where before they were
considered places of poverty which must be erased, now there is more knowledge about the
level of complexity, origin, multicausality, and possibilities of these dwellings. This may vary
across the globe, as the necessities, problems, and realities are different as well, hence the error
in using the term ‘global south’. However, as Brand (2010) mentioned in his essay, can ‘slums’
-or informal settlements in the context of this document- save the planet? to analyse this
assertion, we will turn to the original source to break down the arguments that support it.
“The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their
residents. To a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. I trained as biologist and to me they look
organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density -1m people
per square mile in some areas of Mumbai- and have minimum energy and material use. People
get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi (…) in most slums recycling
is literally a way of life (…) Mozambiquan children pick over the rubbish of Maputo’s main tip
(…) New York is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities
in the world…The key to New York’s environmental benignity is its extreme compactness (…)
the crisis in the Amazon rainforest, suggests that the nationally subsidized city of Manaus in
northern Brazil “answers the question” of how to stop deforestation: give people decent jobs.
Then they can afford houses, and gain security. One thousand people who would otherwise be
deforesting the jungle around Manaus are now prospering in town making such things as mobile
phones and televisions” (Brand, 2010).
At first glance, it could be said that the text is written from a (hopefully unconscious)
colonialist perspective, however, that discussion exceeds the scope of this essay. Specifically,
the extract has important argumentative fallacies, like incorrectly generalizing the
characteristics of slums (density, greenery, etc); some ambiguous correlations between slums
and job/deforestation in Brazil, and between informal settlements and ‘compactness’; and a
quite debatable quotation about the benefits of having children picking rubbish in
Mozambiquan streets, which could be eventually defined as child labour4. Nevertheless, we
will analyse more in-depth each of the statements below more, arguing that Chilean informal
settlements are not as romantically sustainable as they appear to be.

1. “The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and
gradually by their residents”.
Leaving aside the ambiguous concept of ‘squatter city’, it can be argued that
in Chile, where the idea of private property is heavily rooted in society, the
improvement of the physical environment is related to its tenure more than
to the dichotomy of formality and informality. It is common to see formal
and traditional neighbourhoods that are constantly improved and cared for
by their users. It could be said that the same situation occurs in campamentos,
however, we must acknowledge that the resources to develop significant and
long-lasting improvements are scarce, thus most of the ‘public’ areas in
informal settlements are just small dirt roads, without light, pavements, or
vegetation. Therefore, the ‘magic’ of having residents that are willing to take
care of and improve their dwellings cannot be exclusively related to informal
settlements.

2. “Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green”.

As it is not clear if by ‘green’ the author means a high level of vegetation or
if he refers to a sustainable way of living, we will discuss both arguments:
first, in the hypothetical scenario that Brand refers to vegetation, it must be
said that most campamentos usually don’t have a regular water supply, so
the vegetation that grows is in its majority endemic. However, with the
severe drought that the country is experiencing, most informal settlements
don’t have any vegetation at all.
In the scenario that the term ‘green’ is used as sustainable, it is not clear
if the author is talking about energy consumption, pollution, CO2 footprint,
etc. it is, therefore, necessary to specify the term in order to analyse it.
Nevertheless, some authors, like Jorgenson, Rice, and Clark (2010), studied
several cases to conclude that growth in energy consumption is negatively
associated with the “percentage of the population living in urban slums
condition” in less developed countries.

3. “They have maximum density -1m people per square mile in some areas of
Mumbai” and “New York is the greenest community in the United States,
and one of the greenest cities in the world…The key to New York’s
environmental benignity is its extreme compactness”.
It is incorrect to assume that all informal settlements are highly dense. In the
case of Chile, according to Calderón (2018) campamentos have a
compactness lower than 25 households per hectare (approximately 25.900
inhabitants per square mile), which is considered ‘low density’. This is
mostly because self-built structures are commonly low-height, which means
that these informal settlements spread in the territory. Nevertheless, if we
talk about general density, it is correct to say that the urban shape plays a
main role in the overall energy consumption of a city. As an example, it is

4
According to the International Labour Organization, not all work done by children is child labour, the term
should be used for activities that deprive children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity, and that is
harmful to their development.
 expected that, for LA and the Caribbean, the implementation of compact
cities will have the same impact as the use of highly efficient technologies,
whereas for regions such as China, two-thirds of a potential energy saving
could be reached through the promotion of dense cities (Güneralp et al.,
2017).

4. “People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi”.
When it comes to the transport mean of inhabitants of informal settlements,
it is true that in the majority of cases they move by foot and bicycle, but it is
necessary to also add public transport. In this sense, most inhabitants
prioritize the location over the quality of housing, located in areas closer to
job opportunities and services, reducing the time spent on transport (Brain
Valenzuela et al., 2010). We could therefore argue that it is more sustainable
than the higher-income population, who mostly use private vehicles
(SECTRA & Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2012).

5. (…) in most slums recycling is literally a way of life (…) Mozambiquan

children pick over the rubbish of Maputo’s main tip.
As mentioned above, having children picking up rubbish could be catalogued
as child labour, thus we will not discuss this item. However, regarding
recycling, in Chile, most informal settlement dwellers re-use materials that
they find in the streets, landfills, or that are donated by other people, and
there are indeed people who work gathering cardboard in rickshaws.
However, it is incorrect to state that is a ‘way of life’, as recycling is rather
a necessity than a decision. Although there is no data available yet, is not
common to find recycling points in informal settlements.

6. “(…) the nationally subsidized city of Manaus in northern Brazil “answers

the question” of how to stop deforestation: give people decent jobs. Then
they can afford houses, and gain security. One thousand people who would
otherwise be deforesting the jungle around Manaus are now prospering in
town making such things as mobile phones and televisions (…)”
This statement assumes an arguable correlation between house tenancy,
security, and job offers. In the case of Chile, 28% of the people who moved
from informal settlements to social houses regret abandoning their
campamento. This is due to the perception of criminality, drug trafficking,
and consumption. Furthermore, 51% of informal settlement households are
not in a ‘poverty’ situation, they have prioritized the location of the
settlement (Brain Valenzuela et al., 2010). It is thus incorrect to assume that
with ‘decent’ jobs, and regular income, people will decide to acquire a house.
Could be argued -in Manaus particularly- that providing jobs will reduce the
deforestation of the Amazon after accessing a house, but it is incorrect to
assume that there is a correlation with a housing situation in the rest of LA.

Conclusions

We analysed and concluded that Angelo and Wachsmuth’s idea that the discourse about
informal settlement has turned towards seeing them as potential resources for sustainable
urbanism on a global scale has a high level of abstraction, which makes it difficult to
comprehend and hypothetically apply. To accurately discuss the potential benefits of informal
settlements, its necessary to analyse the different realities of these dwellings, and the different
realities for their implementation. With generic assertions, it won’t be possible to successfully
find the virtues of informal settlements. A correct terminology must be used. Nevertheless,
there is indeed a change in the discourse about informal settlements, it’s not globally equivalent,
and it is related to the diversity of cultures and societies. In Chile, there is a new perspective on
campamentos, which moved from a discourse of ‘poverty’ to govern and depoliticise, going to
a discourse of ‘depoliticise’ to ‘passively demand’ a housing solution, to finally be perceived
as territories of self-organization, solidarity, and social struggle.
We also conclude that campamentos itself won’t save the planet. By examining Brand’s
arguments, we see that sustainability cannot be -at least exclusively- related to informal
settlements. Self-improvement and taking care of are not related to the formal/informal status
of a settlement, but rather are related to the security of tenure and resources. Furthermore, we
can say that in a solidarity-based state, this task should be regulated by the public sector. As for
the green features, in the case of Chile and other countries experiencing droughts, it’s not
possible to relate to informal settlements. Density is a characteristic that has a correlation with
lower energy consumption, however, it is incorrect to associate high density with informal
settlements, as most of them are self-built and spread in their territory, reaching low levels of
density. Regarding recycling, informal settlement residents indeed reuse materials, however,
there is no data available yet to argue that recycling is a ‘way of life’. Lastly, it is incorrect to
assume that the correlation found in Manaus between job offers and house acquisition can exist
in other areas. In the case of Chile, a significant number of people will prioritize a well-
positioned campamento over a definitive house with a bad location.
According to Jorgenson, Rice and Clark (2010), there is a correlation between lower
energy consumption and the percentage of the population living in ‘slums, the study included
several ‘less-developed’ countries (not Chile), so it may be argued that campamentos consume
less energy than traditional homes. Nevertheless, regarding the contributions of informal
settlements to the future, it must be said that they do present an outstanding virtue that is not
easy to find elsewhere, this is self-organization and the capacity of these groups to generate
impacts on the city. Differently from ‘formal’ neighbourhoods, campamentos are breeding
grounds for different types of associations, with diverse functions and goals, bit all of them are
based in solidarity. This allows them to be represented and listened to when working for a
definitive housing solution. These groups -as Henri Lefevre would say- are fighting for their
right to the city, their right to not be excluded, their right to access public services, and their
right to participate in the urban economy. These organized groups, not their particular
settlements or their necessities, are the ones that will -hopefully- contribute meaningfully to
saving the planet.

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