Informal settlement
An informal settlement , also known as a marginal settlement or an imprecise slum , is a settlement, often close to or within a city , that consists mainly or exclusively of makeshift accommodation. The term slum is also used in colloquial language , although this word is used to describe traditionally run-down districts of the core city, while informal settlements are completely new, unplanned "districts" on the outskirts. However, there are also settlements that are more informal in terms of their structural and legal character, but not slums, but forms of temporary protest culture (protest camps, e.g. Hüttendorf ) or alternative lifestyles (e.g. the ideal of a simple life ).
In most countries, settlements are only referred to as informal when the land ownership has not been clarified. Sometimes a distinction is also made between informal and irregular settlements, whereby in the informal settlements there is no legal property ownership by the residents, whereas in the irregular settlements the ownership structure is disputed. However, there are often regular city districts in which the infrastructural conditions are just as bad as in the actual informal settlements. These are usually referred to in everyday language using the same term as in the case of Villa Miseria in Argentina.
Informal settlements have different characteristics and their own names in different countries: in Argentina they are called Villa Miseria , in Brazil Favela , in Peru Pueblos jóvenes and Asentamientos Humanos (see also Barriadas ), in Chile Poblaciones , in Ecuador Invasiones and in Turkey Gecekondu . Other names are Bidonville in francophone Africa , Katchi abadi in Pakistan and shanty town or shantytown in the English-speaking world.
Characteristics
Informal settlements exist in many cities in developing countries , but they also exist in some developed countries . For example, it is estimated that in the Madrid metropolitan area in 2006 5,000 people (approx. 0.1% of the population) lived in informal settlements. In some German cities - such as Berlin - there is this inexpensive settlement variant with the site trailer park . In developing countries, however, these numbers are much higher. In the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires ( Argentina ) around 1,100,000 people (9% of the population) live in informal settlements, in Rio de Janeiro ( Brazil ) around 19% and in some cities in Africa over 50%.
Most informal settlements only have between 10 and 1000 inhabitants, but there are also settlements with well over 100,000 inhabitants in some large cities. Comas, for example, a poor suburb of Lima , has just under half a million inhabitants. However, such large informal settlements usually already develop a heterogeneous structure and are slowly becoming a separate city or a group of city quarters with different socio-economic strata, whereby the basic conditions are usually legalized step by step. A particularly good example is El Alto in Bolivia , which has developed from an informal settlement in La Paz into an independent suburb with its own community.
development
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Most informal settlements in developing countries develop according to the following pattern: A few families spontaneously build temporary dwellings made of wood, cardboard and corrugated iron on land owned by the state or by an owner who does not use the land. Also unfinished buildings , rundown abandoned buildings and even parked rail cars in dilapidated railway stations can develop into informal settlements follows the same pattern. Especially in the case of unused state land, these residents are often tolerated for months due to the lack of control options. Little by little, word gets around about the new settlement and is populated by more and more families, the population density is increasing. At the same time, the building stock is usually improving, so that the cores of the settlements usually now have brick houses and sometimes even asphalt roads, which is also due to the fact that there are often government projects that specifically improve the infrastructure in such settlements, as in the case, for example the Brazilian project Favela-Bairro and the Argentine Promeba .
Contrary to popular belief, informal settlements rarely have a higher crime rate than other neighborhoods. Nevertheless, some of the larger settlements, especially in emerging countries such as Brazil, are often a place where criminals can “go into hiding” without being seen, which is why drug and arms trafficking are often concentrated in such settlements. In some cases, mafia- like power structures are developing there that cannot be effectively combated by the police or other state organizations, as the residents are under pressure from an illegal organization. By building cultural centers, community halls, founding dance and music groups, sporting activities and other things, the state often tries to contact the population in other ways and in this way to override the organizations, which, however, does not always succeed either.
See also
- urbanization
- Quinta Monroy , development project in Chile, 2004
literature
- Elisabeth Blum, Peter Neitzke : FavelaMetropolis. Reports and projects from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Birkhäuser, Basel / Boston / Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-7643-7063-7
Web links
- Project Celula Urbana ( memento from January 15, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in Rio de Janeiro
Individual evidence
- ^ Study by the University of General Sarmiento and the organization Info-Habitat ( Memento of March 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Population in Rio's favelas reaches one million. ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Brazilnow.info based on a report in the newspaper O Globo of December 20, 2004 (English).