Slums form 40% of urban housing, UN agency reports

The world's population increasingly favours city life, but 40 per cent of housing in urban areas can now be classified as slums, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) said in a report issued today ahead of World Habitat Day next week.

Nairobi-based UN-HABITAT has estimated slum populations by looking at the percentages of poor households lacking access to permanent housing in compliance with local law, to water within 200 yards (meters) of a dwelling and to sanitation, electricity and sufficient living space per person. The theme of World Habitat Day is "Water and Sanitation for Cities."

"Slums are not inevitable, although they exist," UN-HABITAT Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka told a news conference today at UN Headquarters in New York.

The first report on slums worldwide, called "The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements," recommended that increased political will, investment in infrastructure, pro-active urban planning and the empowerment of the urban poor were all ways of tackling the slum problem, she said.

Joining her were Jeffrey Sachs, Director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals agreed on at a summit in September 2000, and Naison D. Mutizwa-Mangiza, UN-HABITAT's chief of Policy Analysis.

Mr. Sachs identified urbanization as one of the most powerful trends today, but he added that while cities promised long-term economic growth, urban migrants were not finding productive employment or other income-generating activities and did not have access to the necessary infrastructure. The real challenge lay in empowering local communities, which involved finding new ways to mobilize financial resources, he said.

Mr. Mutizwa-Mangiza said Asia had about 550 million people living in slums, followed by Africa with 187 million and Latin America and the Caribbean with 128 million. Another 54 million people lived in slum-like conditions in the high-income countries.