Participatory Slum Upgrading Research Articles

“I built it with my own hands:” A method to assess heterogeneity of housing quality in consolidated informal settlements

Because housing quality varies significantly in informal settlements, participatory slum upgrading must be based on fine-grained empirical analysis of design, structural quality, and materials used in self-help housing. Slum severity indices drawing on indicators defined by UN-Habitat have served to map precarious communities in large Global South cities. However, these assessments cannot capture the heterogeneity of self-built homes within consolidated informal settlements. Building on a case study of a consolidated informal settlement in Mexico City, this research presents a replicable model to measure the range of variability of housing quality by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. We used architectural observations and household surveys to construct a qualitative database of housing quality indicators identified by self-help builders. This fine-grained database allowed us to develop a housing quality index that revealed the heterogeneity of housing quality. We then conducted in-depth interviews that illuminated factors beyond household income that shape the consolidation of self-help buildings, including participation in community-based self-help efforts, apprenticeships, incorporation in social networks, and government assistance. By providing fine-grained documentation of self-help housing heterogeneity based on local knowledge, we contribute a globally applicable model to inform more empirically informed and locally appropriate approaches to participatory slum upgrading in informal settlements.

Participatory Slum Upgrading and Urban Peacebuilding Challenges in Favela Settlements: The Vila Viva Program at Aglomerado da Serra (Belo Horizonte, Brazil)

The concentration of urban violence in certain settlements in Latin America and the possibility of expansion have been latent concerns in slum upgrading. This intervention is potentially an urban peace strategy, especially when it is open to local participation and the promotion of capacities for collective action. However, the political economy behind upgrading shows that these are settings of competence for power and resources. Different factors (e.g., heterogeneity and population size, and project design) account for the bias towards a local elite, which is functional to the interests of public authorities. But, in contexts where power is fluid and challengeable, the informal arrangements between actors involved are more important as mediating social mechanisms of the peacebuilding efforts in the upgrading intervention and their outcomes. This article focuses on the Vila Viva slum-upgrading experience in Aglomerado da Serra, starting in 2005 in Belo Horizonte (Brazil). Social Network Analysis (SNA) models were applied to study the ties linking activists with public and private community initiatives. Interviews and a sociometric survey were used to collect information. The analysed social mechanisms (closure and brokerage types) depicted interaction frameworks with public authorities of two profiles of community activists: traditional and emerging. The first one was functional to the situational crime control approach of Vila Viva, in contrast with territorial rooting defended by emerging activists. The Vila Viva program upgraded the area’s connectivity with the city and broadened the market share of the favela´s drug dealers. After which, they assumed situational control to protect external buyers.

Empowerment or responsibility? Collective finance for slum upgrading in Thailand

The Baan Mankong (‘Secure Housing’) programme of Thailand has been heralded as a model of participatory slum upgrading. Many scholars have praised its participatory and community-based processes, as well as its success in terms of going to scale. The celebration of the programme emphasises its particular model of housing finance, which includes community savings, housing cooperatives, and collective loans for physical upgrading provided through a government agency. This financial model, along with the collective and participatory processes it employs, form the foundation of the programme’s claims to ‘empowerment.’ In this article, I offer a sympathetic critique of Baan Mankong by analysing how this financial model actually plays out on the ground through an in-depth ethnographic study of the policy and its participants. I conclude that, despite the policy’s intentions to empower communities through access to collective finance, many participants find themselves struggling with debt and living under a new form of financialised community that reshapes their social relations with neighbours and burdens them with the responsibility for financing and carrying out development desired by the state.

DEVELOPMENT AND SHELTER CHALLENGES OF SMALL ISLANDS: PLANNING WITH A PRO-POOR PERSPECTIVE

This paper explores why and how small island developing states (SIDS) in the Asia-Pacific region should adopt pro-poor policies to overcome development related affordable housing challenges. It first outlines SIDS’ common development challenges—small size, remoteness, greater exposure to economic and environmental shocks, and brisk urbanization. In a globalized world, SIDS’ developmental and geographic constraints make providing equitable shelter harder. Developing Asia’s rapid urban growth and simultaneously widening urban inequality offer hope and sound caution alike for SIDS, whose potential and propensity to attract global investment are unique. Tourism-based economic development is poised to accelerate the private sector’s influence on SIDS’ land and housing markets. This paper presents the cities of Honolulu (USA), Surabaya (Indonesia), and Dili (Timor Leste) as cases that exemplify, respectively, the advanced, intermediate, and early stages of a possible development continuum for SIDS. Utilizing secondary literature, primary qualitative field-research, news media sources, and observations, it demonstrates that despite common developmental challenges SIDS’ diverse governance models and institutional capacities preclude definitive solutions. Instead, it argues for tailored yet flexible policy responses informed by multiple pro-poor principles—inclusivity, affordability, alternative forms of tenure security, and innovative design and construction. Sensitive, context-appropriate adaptation of innovative policy tools that have proven effective in fraught contexts elsewhere (especially, transfer of development rights, inclusionary housing, land pooling/sharing, participatory slum upgrading, and community benefits agreements) can guide SIDS to expand pro-poor shelter provision.

Institutionalizing participatory slum upgrading: a case study of urban co-production from Afghanistan, 2002–2016

Institutionalizing slum upgrading as part of government-led citywide or national programmes can overcome the limitations of piecemeal, “bottom-up”, ad-hoc upgrading projects. This article presents a case study of 15 years of practice to institutionalize participatory slum upgrading in Afghanistan. The article explains the main approach and tools used in Afghanistan to mobilize residents into Community Development Councils (CDCs), undertake neighbourhood action planning, and implement civil works projects in a co-production process to improve access to basic urban services and strengthen local governance. The findings provide original insights into key elements for institutionalization in fragile contexts: (i) building support of the international community, donors, and development banks for urban investment; (ii) the role of community contributions; (iii) the need to embed upgrading with improved tenure security and municipal revenue generation; and (iv) the importance of reliable and recent data to guide decision-making and build political support for in-situ settlement upgrading.

Participatory incremental slum upgrading towards sustainability: an assessment of slum dwellers’ willingness and ability to pay for utility services

The concept of participatory slum upgrading has received attention in the conventional literature because it ensures and promotes the sustainability of slum-upgrading programmes. In participatory slum-upgrading programmes, slum dwellers are treated as partners, instead of recipients of the services that are provided to mitigate their deprivations. The concept thrives on the willingness and ability of slum dwellers to pay for the services. The ability of slum dwellers to pay for services, unlike their willingness to pay, has received limited research attentions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the willingness and ability of residents of a slum settlement in Kumasi in Ghana to pay for utility services. Semi-structured interview schedules were used to gather primary data from a total of 276 households. The survey data were supplemented with data from key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The results show that almost nine out of every ten households were willing to pay for water and electricity services, if these services would be supplied to them directly by the state providers. The exploitation of the residents by unregulated utility services providers partly explains their willingness to pay for the utility services. These service providers charged almost 14 times the official tariffs. The results further show that all the households who were willing to pay were also capable of paying for the services without compromising their ability to afford other life essentials. The study concludes that slum regularisation policies, programmes and projects could be designed to be incremental and participatory by making the slum dwellers, partners and drivers of the upgrading process.

Participatory Slum Upgrading and Community-based Development: Practices and Challenges

Participatory Slum Upgrading and Community-based Development: Practices and Challenges

Baan Mankong participatory slum upgrading in Bangkok, Thailand: Community perceptions of outcomes and security of tenure

A key problem facing slum dwellers is tenure insecurity – as well as the threat of eviction, residents are excluded from many services extended to legal residents, from water connections to public schooling. Thailand’s Baan Mankong slum upgrading program adopts a people-driven approach to resolving problems of insecure housing and poor living conditions, putting slum residents at the core of the process. This paper explores, through interviews, how residents in four Bangkok communities perceive the outcomes of upgrading, particularly their new homes and tenure situation. Participant satisfaction is key to ensuring successful scaling up of Baan Mankong, as this is done through community-driven exchange and learning-by-doing. The results show that while the respondents appreciate their new houses and improved living environment, they are wary of the resulting debt burden. While tenure is regarded as secure in the short term, the long-term situation is not so clear. Homes cannot be sold on outside the community, and therefore Baan Mankong is valued more for improving shelter and strengthening community cohesiveness, rather than as a profit-driven financial investment.

Evolving Institutional Arrangements, Scaling Up, and Sustainability

Urban development and poverty alleviation efforts in the Global South, such as slum upgrading, have been transformed by policy shifts toward more decentralization, reduced state control, and greater civil society and community participation in local governance. The Slum Networking Project (SNP) in Ahmedabad, India, is an internationally recognized “best practice” in participatory slum upgrading. We illustrate how changing the nature of multi-stakeholder participation in the SNP affected its potentials for sustainability and scaling up. Stakeholder ability to alter the institutional arrangement resulted in a significant transfer of project implementation responsibility and authority from the state to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Although these stakeholder-initiated institutional innovations initially expedited and expanded SNP and made it more sustainable, we argue that the enlarged role for NGOs in the current institutional arrangement can limit the program’s potential for further scaling up.

Improving the Health and Lives of People Living in Slums

Urban poverty, ill health, and living in slums are intrinsically interwoven. Poverty is multidimensional and there is no agreement on a universal definition. UN-HABITAT has introduced an operational definition of slums that is restricted to legal aspects and excludes the more difficult social dimensions. The World Health Organization definition is more comprehensive and uses a health and social determinants approach that is strongly based on the social conditions in which people live and work. Health and improving the lives of people living in slums is at the top of international development agenda. Proactive strategies to contain new urban populations and slum upgrading are the two key approaches. Regarding the latter, participatory upgrading that most often involves the provision of basic infrastructure is currently the most acceptable intervention in developing countries. In urbanization of poverty, participatory slum upgrading is a necessary but not sufficient condition to reduce poverty and improve the lives of slum dwellers. Empowering interventions that target capacity development and skill transfer of both individuals and community groups--as well as meaningful negotiations with institutions, such as municipal governments, which can affect slum dwellers' lives--appear to be the most promising strategies to improve the slum dwellers' asset bases and health. Non-governmental organizations, training institutions, and international development partners are best placed to facilitate horizontal relationships between individuals, community groups, and vertical relationships with more powerful institutions that affect the slum dwellers' lives. The main challenge appears to be lack of commitment from the key stakeholders to upgrade interventions citywide.