"Shantytown" redirects here. For the created gold-mining town in New Zealand, see Shantytown, New Zealand.

Shanty town in Soweto, South Africa, 2005

A shanty town (also called a squatter settlement) is a slum settlement (sometimes illegal or unauthorized) of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: often plywood, corrugated metal and sheets of plastic. Shanty towns, which are usually built on the periphery of cities, often do not have proper sanitation, electricity or telephone services.

Shanty towns are mostly found in developing nations, or partially developed nations with an unequal distribution of wealth. In extreme cases, shanty towns have populations approaching that of a city. As of 2005^[update], one billion people, one-sixth of the world's population, live in shanty towns.^[1]

Etymology[link]

Shanty may have derived from the Irish Gaelic seantigh, pronounced shant-tí, meaning "old house". The synonym shack may also have passed from Gaelic into English from teach, pronounced chaċ, meaning "house". Both words appeared in American English in the 1880s, when Irish migrants were flooding into New York's tenements. ^[2]

Features[link]

Cité Soleil, Haiti, 2002

Since construction is informal and unguided by urban planning, there is a near total absence of formal street grids, numbered streets, sewage network, electricity, or telephones. Even if these resources are present, they are likely to be disorganized, old or inferior. Shanty towns also tend to lack basic services present in more formally organized settlements, including policing, medical services and fire fighting. Fires are a particular danger for shanty towns not only for the lack of fire fighting stations and the difficulty fire trucks have traversing the absence of formal street grids,^[3] but also because of the high density of buildings and flammability of materials used in construction^[4] A sweeping fire on the hills of Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong, in late 1953 left 53,000 squatter dwellers homeless, prompting the colonial government to institute a resettlement estate system.

Shanty towns have high rates of crime, suicide, drug use and disease. However the observer Georg Gerster has noted (with specific reference to the invasões of Brasilia), "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." (1978)^[5] Stewart Brand has also written, more recently, that "squatter cities are Green. They have maximum density—­a million people per square mile in Mumbai—­and minimum energy and mate­rial use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi ... Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, Jan Chipchase from Nokia found that people leave their lights on all day. In most slums recycling is literally a way of life." (2010)^[6]

Examples[link]

Shacks in the shanty town of Kibera, Kenya.

Shanty towns are present in a number of countries. The largest shanty town in Asia is the Orangi Township, in Karachi, Pakistan.^{[7][8][dead link]} while the largest in Africa is Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa^{[citation needed]}. While shanty towns are less common in Europe, the growing influx of illegal immigrants have fueled shantytowns in cities commonly used as a point of entry into the EU, including Athens and Patras in Greece.^[9]

In francophone countries, shanty towns are referred to as bidonvilles (French for "can town"); such countries include Tunisia, Haiti, and France itself – see bidonvilles in France.

Other countries with shanty towns include India, South Africa (where they are often called squatter camps) or imijondolo, Kenya, the Philippines (often called squatter areas), Venezuela (where they are known as barrios), Brazil (favelas), Argentina villas miseria), West Indies such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (where they are known as Shanty town), and Peru (where they are known as "young towns"). There are also shanty town population in countries such as Bangladesh^[10] and the People's Republic of China.^[11][12][13]

First world countries[link]

Although shantytowns are less common in first world countries, there are some cities that suffer from the shanty town condition. In Madrid, Spain, a low-class neighborhood named La Cañada Real (which is considered a shanty town) has no schools, nurseries or health clinics. Some homes have no running water and rubble and trash is everywhere.^[14] In Portugal, shanty towns known as "barracas" are made up of immigrants from former Portuguese African colonies and Gypsies from Romania. The settlements are so bad that they can be compared to other shanty towns in third world countries.^[15] In the United States, some cities such as Newark and Oakland suffer from high rates of poverty (28% in Newark and 17% in Oakland) and lead to the creation of tent cities. In Canada, the cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal have various "tent-like cities" or "box-cart neighborhoods" that are often comparable to the shanty towns in the developing world. Other settlements in developed countries that are comparable to shanty towns include the Colonias on the border between the United States and Mexico, and bidonvilles in France, which may exist in the peripheries of some cities.

Development[link]

While most shanty towns begin as precarious establishments haphazardly thrown together without basic social and civil services, over time many have undergone a significant amount of development. Often the residents themselves are responsible for the major improvements.^[16] Community organizations sometimes working alongside NGO's, private companies, and the government, set up connections to the municipal water supply, pave roads, and build local schools.^[16] Many of these shanties have become middle class suburbs. One such extreme example is the Los Olivos Neighborhood of Lima, Peru. The Megaplaza shopping mall, one of Lima's largest, along with gated communities, casinos, and even plastic surgery clinics, are just a few of many developments that have transformed what used to be a decrepit shanty.^[16] Brazilian favelas have also seen huge improvements in recent years, enough so to attract tourists who flock to catch a glimpse of the colorful lifestyle perched atop Rio de Janeiro's highlands.^[17] Development occurs over a long period of time and newer towns 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 and replacement by gated communities constructed over their ruins.^[18]

See also[link]

Regional names[link]

• Asentamientos in Guatemala
• Campamentos or poblaciones callampa in Chile.
• Zona marginal in Mexico
• Colonias or "Migrant camps" on the Mexico – United States border
• Favelas in Brazil
• Cantegril in Uruguay
• Gecekondu in Turkey
• Hoovervilles in the United States (historical)
• Bidonvilles in France
• Pueblos jóvenes (young towns) or barriadas in Peru
• Villas Miseria or just villas in Argentina
• Tent cities in the United States
• Barrios de invasión in Colombia
• Invasiones in Puerto Rico
• Basti in India
• Baraccopoli in Italy

Specific places[link]

• Favela da Rocinha (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
  • see also List of favelas in Brazil
• Cité Soleil (Haiti)
• Dharavi (India)
• Joe Slovo (Cape Town, South Africa)
• Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya)
• Khayelitsha (Cape Town, South Africa)

People and organizations[link]

• Akhtar Hameed Khan
• CEIFAR
• Hernando de Soto (economist)
• Mike Davis (scholar)
• Chinese New Village (Malaysia)
• Orangi Pilot Project
• Slum Dwellers International
• Slum upgrading
• United Nations Human Settlements Programme
• Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
• The Susso, welfare in Australia originating in the Great Depression
• Occupy Wallstreet

Related concepts[link]

• Dormitory
• Ghetto
• Flophouse
• Favela
• Hobo
• Slumlord
• Poverty in France
• Refugee shelter
• Skid row
• Slumdog Millionaire (film)
• District 9 (film)
• City of God (film)
• Squatting
• Tent city
• Trailer park
• Urban decay

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Shanty towns

• Slate article about an economist proposing New Orleans to be reconstructed with shanties
• Photos of Dharavi, a shanty town in Mumbai, India.