Resilient Urban Regeneration in Informal Settlements in the Tropics: Upgrading Strategies in Asia and Latin America

This book focuses on the implementation of slum upgrading projects and the last generation of citywide programmes that define the future urban configuration of informal settlements, from a citywide perspective, in the Earth’s tropical region. The book presents a study on regeneration experiences in Asia and Latin America and it identifies important points of connection and similarities between the two cases, while also determining that, compared to Asia, informality in Latin America is in its ‘second generation.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Sep 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9789811373077

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© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

O. Carracedo García-Villalba (ed.)Resilient Urban Regeneration in Informal Settlements in the TropicsAdvances in 21st Century Human Settlementshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7307-7_1

Introduction, Findings, and Reflections

Oscar Carracedo García-Villalba¹  

(1)

Director Master of Urban Design, Director Designing Resilience in Asia International Research Programme, Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

Oscar Carracedo García-Villalba

Email: [e-mail]

Email: [e-mail]

The formation of slums and informal settlements is one of the most visible manifestations of the world’s current rapid urbanisation trends. In the 2016 Global Cities Report, UN-Habitat estimated that 32.7% of the world’s urban population, around 1 billion people, was living in informal urban settlements. With business as usual and fast urbanisation, especially in countries in the Global South, it is expected to grow over one more billion by 2030. The report indicates that the proportion of the world’s urban population living in informal settlements has decreased in the last two decades from 46.2% in 1990 to 32.6% in 2010 and 29.7% in 2014. However, in absolute numbers, the total population living in informal settlements is still growing, and in 2014 881 million people lived in informal settlements, compared to 791 million in 2000, and 689 million in 1990, which represents an increase of 28%, partly due to accelerating urbanisation, population growth and the lack of appropriate land and housing policies (UN-Habitat 2016).

Informal settlements are not just a result of population explosion, demographic change and rural-urban migration processes; they exist and keep growing further because of ineffective urban planning and regulatory systems, a failure of national and government housing policies, laws and delivery systems to meet demand, low investment in infrastructure, and the limited options for people with fewer economic resources to access the formal land and housing market.

In the Policy Focus Report (2011), Fernandes explains that urban planning tradition has always excluded urban informality and the urban poor, which, as a result, has reinforced the informal processes. The recurrent poor integration of land, housing, environment, transportation, taxation and budgetary policies has caused urban planning and planners to fail often to promote a more inclusive urban order, with discriminatory urban planning regulations based on unrealistic technical standards that do not take into account the socio-economic realities determining the conditions of access to land and housing.

1 A Different Approach to Tackle the Same Problem

The view and response of cities and governments toward the question of informal settlements has evolved over time, from the eviction, slum clearance, relocation and resettlement practices usually implemented before and during the 60s to the supportive practices of sites and services and participatory on-site slum upgrading implemented between the 70s and 90s, and in the last two decades the generation of citywide upgrading programs that define the future urban configuration of informal settlements from a resilient citywide perspective (UN-Habitat 2012).

Although the first approaches are still used in many countries, and informal settlements and settlers are still stigmatised in many cases, a new approach began to be clearly, and officially, adopted in September of 2000, when all the member countries of the United Nations signed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) declaration. The document proposed eight goals and committed nations to a new global vision with the aim of reducing extreme poverty by 2015. Specifically, in relation to informal settlements, Goal 7.D targeted to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020 (United Nations 2015).

In this document, and in the 2010/2011 State of the World’s Cities Report, the halfway document towards the accomplishment of the MDGs, UN-Habitat demonstrated a shift in the attention to informal settlements and a clear support for the on-site slum upgrading policies.

Building on the results of the MDGs, on the improvements achieved in the quality of life of millions of informal settlement dwellers, as well as on the biased approaches to informality by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the New Urban Agenda included in 2017 a clear statement towards the prioritisation of regenerating and upgrading on-site slums and informal settlements avoiding spatial and socio-economic segregation and gentrification, preventing and countering the stigmatisation of specific groups, and integrating informal settlements into the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of cities (UN-Habitat 2017a). This statement was reflected in Goal 11, that established the objective of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable ensuring access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums by 2030 (United Nations