Improving Shanty Settlements in the LEDW: Various Schemes

Shanty towns or squatter settlements consist of a collection of small, crude shacks made of discarded materials. They serve as habitations for poor people on the outskirts of towns especially in South America (Favelas), Asia (Busti) and Africa (Shanty towns). Shanty towns have few services and are usually heavily crowded. Several schemes have been developed to help improve them. These include self-help/ upgrading, site and service, co-operatives, high rise blocks and new settlements such as satellite towns.

The simplest and most straightforward way of improving housing is known as Upgrading.

This involves improving housing and facilities in already existing squatter settlements and is known as self help housing. The most important thing about this approach is the community spirit. There are three potential upgrading elements.

Firstly, the provision of the basic services for example water, toilets, and electricity that are missing. The second thing that is usually necessary to be improved is the physical layout of the area. Every effort is made during this to minimise the disruption involved.

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The process is often referred to as reblocking. The most important is the third, the establishment of security of tenure. This is vital for homeowners to improve their homes. Self help projects include the Tondo Foreshore Development project in the city of Manila in the Philippines and Chennai (formerly Madras) in India.

Chennai is located on the south-east coast of India. Chennai has suffered a rapid increase in population and therefore a rapid growth in the slums. Chennai is vulnerable to cyclones, fire and floods as well as other physical hazards, it has a lack of amenities which has lead to a low standard of hygiene.

This alongside its poverty and overcrowding. These are just some of Chennais main problems that have occurred in the slum housing.

The housing board and slum clearance board are responsible for housing improvements in Chennai. Alongside other schemes were the upgrading of the slums took place with the aims of providing one bath and one toilet per ten families. This scheme encourages greater community involvement. This overall is one of the most successful schemes.

Site and service schemes involves the use of new land which is divided into plots or sites on which house can be built. These plots are then supplied with the basic services required by residents. This scheme is most appropriate in the poorer countries whose governments cannot afford large rehousing schemes like in Pandora in Nairobi. In the purest form, therefore, the people are left to build their own houses. This approach retains the advantage of allowing people to build the homes that they can afford to extend and improve them as their fortunes improve and their family circumstances change. Site and service schemes involve opening new lands. They are often constructed on the outskirts of the city where land is relatively cheap.

In Lusaka (Zambia) a site and service scheme has been set up which encourages twenty-five individuals to group together. They are given a standpipe and eight hectares of land. If the group digs ditches and foundations then with the money saved the authorities will lay water and drainage pipes and construct houses. Furthermore if local craftsmen are prepared to build the shells of the houses, the group will be supplied with low-price building materials and the extra money saved by the local authority maybe used to add electricity and tarmac to the roads.

In Sao Paulo's periferia, several schemes have enabled running water, main drains and electricity to be added to houses with street lighting and improved roads depending on the amount of surplus money. The result, over a lengthy period of time has been the upgrading of living conditions even though people are still poor.

Site and service can create a community spirit, can improve the skills of local people and can create cheap to erect accommodation. Yet their success often depends upon the motivation and skills of the local people and the use of appropriate cheap building materials under expert guidance.

Self help and site and service schemes are the in-between stages of the co-operative scheme. This scheme is the key to further improvements, the next step is the legal title to the land or at least some guarantee of permanence by the authorities. Only then is it safe for residents to build permanent homes made out of bricks and mortar. The community association can then put together a convincing case to the authorities to install water, drains and electricity and to build roads. Co-operative schemes are very much apart of site and service and self help schemes.

High rise blocks are different again. These are provided in the hope of replacing squatter settlements. In the 1950's in Venezuela it was decided that 97 superblocks, 15 storeys high would be built in Caracas (the capital city) using some of the money from the cities oil wealth. These plans were based upon similar high rise schemes being built in many developed countries. The superblocks were built with the intention of rehousing 180,000 people from the rancheros (shantytowns). The new flats had basic services and between two and four bedrooms. However, initially the scheme was not successful. It encouraged even more migrants to flock to the city and rents were too high for the ranchero dwellers leading to sub letting and overcrowding. The superblocks were poorly constructed and rarely repaired; there were few social facilities and the blocks were built to close together leaving no space and affecting lighting to the apartments, Despite this rural migrants flocked to the area and several thousand were left squatting illegally. This scheme is one of the less successful housing improvement schemes.

As a last result of rapid migration to cities, the city becomes overcrowded and this is when governments have to take action, like the Brazilian government did.

In Brazil the government decided to move the capital city from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia. They did this in the hope of achieving a more even distribution of wealth and development within the country and to divert growth away from the rapidly growing south east. Construction of Brasilia began in 1957 following an aeroplane design and layout. It was planned for the motor car and contained housing superblocks in the "wings". The superblocks contain between nine and eleven apartments each ten storeys high and designed for 2,500 people. Even though over a million people now live in the new town of Brasilia the low-cost housing is too expensive even for the urban poor and so the favelas have continued to grow in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and have even began to appear in Brasilia. This scheme was fairly successful as it did reduce the amount of overcrowding in Rio de Janeiro it didn't really helps those living in the favelas as they still suffer the same problems.

Cairo also had a similar idea to this and they built new satellite and dormitory towns such as 10th Ramadan and 15th May. These have been built in the hope to disperse some of the city's population and have so far proved been successful.

Improving conditions for the urban poor in cities in the less economically developed world remain a key issue for many governments and local authorities. Most LEDCs want to improve life for the urban poor despite lack of finance, difficulties over land ownership and the continuing flood of rural migrants into the cities all make the task extremely difficult. Several shanty settlement improvement schemes have helped to improve conditions. It is indicated throughout the LEDW that the most successful projects revolve around self help schemes that can be made affordable for even the poorest sections of the shanty town communities. They also maintain community spirit and enable families to continue to access their places of employment. The less successful schemes include the high rise flats and those involving the re-housing of the squatters on the periphery of cities or beyond. Schemes must provide continuity of employment, formal or informal or alternative employment opportunities to be successful.