Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
37
Low-income shelter in the third world city
Rob Potter
per cent) of the inhabitants of Caracas, Venezuela
were to be found residing in self-help homes.
Such issues are reflected in the simple
typology of low-income shelter in third world
cities, which is reproduced here as Figure 37.1.
First, there are the homeless and the street
sleepers. Many urban residents are far too poor
to be able to afford any sort of home, whether
rented or owned, and are forced to sleep in the
streets. In Calcutta in the early 1960s, for
example, it was estimated that more than 600,000
dwellers slept on the streets, while in Bombay,
one in every sixty-six were homeless and a
further 77,000 lived under stairways, on landings
and the like (Abrams 1964).
Second, a large group are to be found renting
accommodation in slums and tenements. It is
INTRODUCTION
A perennial applied development problem is that
everybody needs shelter although, viewed globally,
not everyone is able to secure what may be
regarded as housing of an adequate standard. It is
believed that 20 per cent of the world's total
population does not have access to decent shelter.
Further, it is estimated that in the predominantly
poor and middle-income countries that make up
what is referred to as the 'third world' or 'South',
perhaps as many as one-half live in homes that may
be deemed substandard.
In a similar vein, McAuslan (1985) contends
that in the majority of major cities to be found in
the third world, more than 1 million people live
in illegally or informally developed settlements,
with little or no piped water, sanitation or services.
The occupants are frequently unable to afford
even the smallest or cheapest professionally
constructed, legal house that possesses basic
amenities. The majority of houses have been self-
built in so far as their residents have taken
responsibility for organising the design and
construction of their own homes.
In the early 1960s, Abrams (1964) bemoaned
the fact that despite progress in the fields of
manufacturing, education and the sciences, the
provision of simple shelter affording privacy and
protection against the elements was still beyond
the reach of the majority of the world's
population. At the beginning of the 1990s, it was
estimated that 9.47 million people (60 per cent of
the population) in Mexico City lived in self-help
housing. At about the same time, 1.67 million (61
Figure 37.1 A typology of low-income housing in third
world cities.
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