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A shanty town, squatter area, squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated iron sheets. A typical shanty town is squatted and, at least initially, lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity and street drainage. Over time, shanty towns may develop their infrastructure and even change into middle class neighbourhoods.Template:Citation needed They can be small informal settlements or they can house millions of people.
First used in North America to designate a shack, the term shanty is likely derived from French chantier (construction site and associated low-level workers' quarters), or alternatively from Scottish Gaelic sean ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}) meaning 'old' and taigh ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}) meaning 'house[hold]'.
Globally, some of the largest shanty towns are Ciudad Neza in Mexico, Orangi in Pakistan and Dharavi in India. They are known by various names in different places, such as favela in Brazil, villa miseria in Argentina and gecekondu in Turkey. Shanty towns are mostly found in developing nations, but also in the cities of developed nations, such as Athens, Los Angeles and Madrid. Cañada Real is considered the largest informal settlement in Europe, and Skid Row is an infamous shanty town in Los Angeles. Shanty towns are sometimes found on places such as railway sidings, swampland or disputed building projects. In South Africa, squatter camps, often referred to as "plakkerskampe", directly translated from the Afrikaans word for squatter camps, often start and grow rapidly on vacant land or public spaces within or close to cities and towns, where there may be nearby work opportunities, without the cost of transport.
ConstructionEdit
Shanty towns tend to begin as improvised shelters on squatted land. People build shacks from whatever materials are easy to acquire, for example wood or mud. There are no facilities such as electricity, gas, sewerage or running water. The squatters choose areas such as railway sidings, preservation areas or disputed building projects.<ref name="Encyclopedia">Template:Cite book</ref> Swiss journalist Georg Gerster noted, with specific reference to the invasões of Brasília, that "squatter settlements [as opposed to slums], despite their unattractive building materials, may also be places of hope, scenes of a counter-culture, with an encouraging potential for change and a strong upward impetus".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Stewart Brand observed that shanty towns are environmentally friendly, with people recycling as much as possible and tending to travel by foot, bicycle, rickshaw or shared taxi rather than car, due to poverty.<ref>Stewart Brand,Stewart Brand on New Urbanism and squatter communities Template:Webarchive, The New Urban Network, reprinted from Whole Earth Discipline, Penguin.</ref>
Development and future prospectsEdit
While most shanty towns begin as precarious establishments haphazardly thrown together without basic social and civil services, over time, some have undergone a certain amount of development. Often the residents themselves are responsible for the major improvements.<ref name="cohaforum.org">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Community organizations sometimes working alongside NGOs, private companies, and the government, set up connections to the municipal water supply, pave roads, and build local schools.<ref name="cohaforum.org" /> Some of these shanties have become middle class suburbs. One such example is the Los Olivos neighbourhood of Lima, Peru, which now contains gated communities, casinos, and plastic surgery clinics.<ref name="cohaforum.org" />
Some Brazilian favelas have also seen improvements in the 21st century, and can even attract tourists.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Development occurs over a long period of time, and newer towns—and many older ones—still lack basic services. Nevertheless, there has been a general trend whereby shanties undergo gradual improvements, rather than relocation to even more distant parts of a metropolis.<ref>Template:Cite conference</ref>Template:Failed verification
In Africa, many shanty towns are starting to implement the use of composting toilets<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and solar panels.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In India, people living in slums have access to cell phones and the internet.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Other African shanty towns have even become popular tourist attractions. Soweto (SOuthWEst TOwnship), an old squatter camp from apartheid-era South Africa is now classified as a city within a city, with a population of almost 2 million. The "Soweto Towers" vertical adventure centre is in Soweto,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and there are guided excursions, often including a Shisa-nyama.
Pope Francis argued in his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato si' that shanty town settlements should be developed, if possible, rather than people being moved on and their settlements destroyed. He and the Catholic Church's Council for Justice and Peace have emphasised the need for information, involvement and choice being offered to people being moved on.<ref>Pope Francis (2015), Laudato si', paragraph 152, accessed 16 February 2024</ref><ref>Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2004), Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, paragraph 482, accessed 16 February 2024</ref>
InstancesEdit
Shanty towns are present in a number of developing countries. In Francophone countries, shanty towns are referred to as bidonvilles (French for "can town"); such countries include Haiti, where Cité Soleil houses between 200,000 and 300,000 people on the edge of Port-au-Prince.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
AfricaEdit
In 2016, 62% of Africa's population was living in shanty towns.<ref name="Slumscapes">Template:Cite news</ref>
Squatter camps in South Africa typically use cheap, and easily acquired building materials such as corrugated tin sheets to build shacks. Offering very little protection against extreme weather conditions, these squatter camps, often built near streams or rivers due to the steady water supply, are often subjected to flash floods. They are also prone to runaway fires due to the close proximity they are built in. They often cause a great deal of damage to naturally occurring ecosystems, both directly, and indirectly. An example of severe indirect damage is the use of washing detergents, and refuse disposal in the nearby water source, which can often be seen for hundreds of kilometers down stream.
Due to the lack of infrastructure, and the cost of basic services, such as water and electricity, the overall squatted area is often barren, with the ground sweeped and stamped to minimise dust, and where gardening is simply impossible and unaffordable. Illegal and dangerous electricity connections are abundant, another danger for fires, and electrical accidents,
The Joe Slovo squatter camp, in Cape Town, houses an estimated 20,000 people.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Shack dwellers in South Africa organise themselves in groups such as Abahlali baseMjondolo and Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.<ref name="Coup">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Originally published in Spanish at Desinformémonos.</ref>Template:Better source needed
In Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, Kibera has between 200,000 and 1 million residents. There is no running water and inhabitants use a flying toilet in which faeces are collected in a plastic bag then thrown away.<ref name="BiggestSlums">Template:Cite news</ref> Mathare is a collection of slums which contain around 500,000 people.<ref name="Mathare">Template:Cite news</ref> In Zambia, the informal housing areas are known as kombonis and approximately 80% of the people in the capital Lusaka are living in them.<ref name="Komboni">Template:Cite book</ref>
AsiaEdit
The largest shanty town in Asia is Orangi in Karachi, Pakistan, which had an estimated 1.5 million inhabitants in 2011.<ref name="BiggestSlums" /> The Orangi Pilot Project aims to lift local people out of poverty. It was begun by Akhtar Hameed Khan and run by Parveen Rehman until her murder in 2013.<ref name="Murdered">Template:Cite news</ref> Residents laid sewage pipes themselves and almost all of Orangi's 8,000 streets are now connected.<ref name="WEF">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In India, an estimated one million people live in Dharavi, a shanty town built on a former mangrove swamp in Mumbai.<ref name="BiggestSlums" /> It is one of the most densely populated places on the globe.<ref name="Straits">Template:Cite news</ref> In 2011, there were at least four improvised settlements in Mumbai containing even more people.<ref name="NoLonger">Template:Cite news</ref> There are in total 3.4 million people living in the 5,000 informal settlements of Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Thailand has 5,500 informal settlements, one of the largest being a shanty town in the Khlong Toei District of Bangkok.<ref name="Bangkok">Template:Cite news</ref> In China, 171 urban villages were demolished before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.<ref name="China">Template:Cite news</ref> As of 2005, there were 346 shanty towns in Beijing, housing 1.5 million people.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Author Robert Neuwirth wrote that around six million people, half the population of Istanbul lived in gecekondu areas.<ref name="Gecekondu">Template:Cite book</ref>
In Hong Kong, the Kowloon Walled City housed up to 50,000 people,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> with rooftop slums currently providing some additional housing. Template:Living spaces
Latin AmericaEdit
The world's largest shanty town is Ciudad Neza or Neza-Chalco-Itza, which is part of the city of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, next to Mexico City. Estimates of its population range from 1.2 million to 4 million.<ref name="Slumscapes" /><ref name="BiggestSlums" />
Brazil has many favelas. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it was calculated in 2000 that over 20% of its 6.5 million inhabitants were living in more than 600 favelas. For example, Rocinha is home to an estimated 80,000 inhabitants. It has developed into a densely populated neighbourhood with some buildings reaching six storeys high. There are theatres, schools, nurseries and local newspapers.<ref name="Encyclopedia" />
In Argentina, shanty towns are known as villas miseria. As of 2011, there were 500,000 people living in 864 informal settlements in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area. In Peru, they are known as pueblos jóvenes ("young towns"), as campamentos in Chile, and as asentamientos in Guatemala.
Developed countriesEdit
During the 1930s Great Depression, shanty towns nicknamed Hoovervilles sprang up across the United States.<ref name="hoovervilles">Template:Cite news</ref> Following the Great Depression, squatters lived in shacks on landfill sites beside the Martin Pena canal in Puerto Rico and were still there in 2010.<ref name="ta2012">What America Looked Like: Puerto Rican Slums in the Early 1970s Template:Webarchive The Atlantic (July 17, 2012)</ref> More recently, cities such as Newark and Oakland have witnessed the creation of tent cities. The Umoja Village shanty town was squatted in 2006 in Miami, Florida.<ref name="TBTL">Template:Cite news</ref> There are also colonias near the border with Mexico.<ref name="Colonia">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Although shanty towns are now generally less common in developed countries in Europe, they still exist. The growing influx of migrants has fuelled shantytowns in cities commonly used as a point of entry into the European Union, including Athens and Patras in Greece.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Calais Jungle in France had grown to over 8,000 people by the time of its clearance in October 2016.<ref name="CJ">Template:Cite news</ref> Bidonvilles exist in the peripheries of some French cities. The state authorities recorded 16,399 people living in 391 slums across the country in 2012. Of these, 41% lived on the outskirts of Paris.<ref name="French">Template:Cite book</ref>
In Madrid, Spain, a shanty town named Cañada Real is considered the largest informal settlement in Europe. It has an estimated 8,628 inhabitants, who are mainly Spanish, Romani and north African, but only one mobile health unit.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> After 40 years, property developers began to take an interest in the site in 2012.<ref>Showdown Looms Over Europe's Largest Shantytown Template:Webarchive LAUREN FRAYER, National Public Radio (Washington DC), April 27, 2012.</ref>
There have been cardboard cities in London and Belgrade. In some cases, shanty towns can persist in gentrified areas that local governments have yet to redevelop, or in regions of political dispute. A major historical example was the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.<ref name="Kowloon">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In Australia and New Zealand, there were many shanty towns before World War II, some of which still exist (for example Wyee,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> a suburb of the Central Coast).
In popular cultureEdit
Many films have been shot in shanty towns. Slumdog Millionaire centres on characters who spend most of their lives in Indian shanty towns.<ref name="Slumdog">Template:Cite news</ref> The Brazilian film City of God was set in Cidade de Deus and filmed in another favela, called Cidade Alta.<ref name="CityOfGod">Template:Cite news</ref> White Elephant, a 2012 Argentinian movie, is set in a villa miseria in Buenos Aires.<ref name="White Elephant">Template:Cite news</ref> The South African film District 9 is largely set in a township called Chiawelo, from which people had been forcibly resettled.<ref name="District9">Template:Cite news</ref>
The 2016 Chinese TV series Housing tells the story of shantytown clearance in Beiliang, Baotou, Inner Mongolia.<ref name="Housing">Template:Cite news</ref>
A 2023 Nigerian crime thriller titled Shanty Town was released on Netflix on January 20, 2023. It is a six-part series that tells the story of a ruthless leader named Scar (Chidi Mokeme) who handles a lot of dirty business and is popularly regarded as the King of Shanty Town.<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/{{#if: tt22099034
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Video games such as Max Payne 3 have levels located in fictional shanty towns.<ref name="MaxPayne">Template:Cite news</ref>
Reggae singer Desmond Dekker sang a song called "007 (Shanty Town)".<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
- Template:Cite book
- Slate article about an economist proposing New Orleans to be reconstructed with shanties
External linksEdit
Template:Homelessness Template:Squatting Template:Authority control