Urban Shanty Research Articles

The Bosnian House: Trajectories of (Non‐)Return Among Bosnian Roma in a Roman Shanty

This article draws on materials collected during ethnographic fieldwork among Bosnian Roma refugees who reconstructed homes in an urban shanty at the periphery of Rome (Italy). In the last two decades, many of these Roma started building or refurbishing houses in villages in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, close to the Serbian Republic (where their former home village is now situated). The construction, refurbishing, and maintenance of these houses played (and still play) a role in the local economy; they also changed the local landscape and became the mark of a new but intermittent presence in post‐Dayton Bosnia. The houses and the transnational practices connected to them have become tokens of economic success and aspirations that revolve around both the Bosnian context and the Roman one. They also express nostalgic attachments to a lost homeland radically transformed by war, foreign interventions, and the advent of the market economy and eventually turned into an unfamiliar place. This article builds on the literature on transnational migration and material culture and explores the ambivalence and complexity of transnational trajectories that stretch between an urban context in the EU and a rural one in non‐EU and reveals complex scenarios of identity, movements, and unlikely returns.

Vulnerability Assessment of Prefabricated Component Suppliers in Prefabricated Buildings Based on the Controlled Interval and Memory Method Extended under the Probability Language Terminology Set

Accurately evaluating the vulnerability of prefabricated components in prefabricated buildings is the basis of scientific management of its supply chain. Thus, a novel vulnerability evaluation method for the suppliers of prefabricated components in the context of prefabricated buildings was proposed in this study. First, a vulnerability evaluation index system was identified and constructed by the pressure–state–response (PSR) model. With the clear logic and strong applicability of PSR, this system, including 18 indexes, was easy to understand and exhibited strong practicability. The weights were then determined via the multiplicative analytic hierarchy process with the expansion of a probabilistic language terminology set (PLTS). PLTS could describe decision information more comprehensively, so the evaluation result is more scientific. Subsequently, the probability of the vulnerability level was superimposed in a parallel bottom-to-top method via the controlled interval and memory (CIM) models, and these were extended by the PLTS. This set handled the uncertain information in the decision-making process more efficiently and accurately, and finally determined the vulnerability distribution. Ultimately, the probability of each vulnerability level was determined by combining the weight information. The reconstruction and resettlement housing construction project of urban shanty towns in the Taohua South Road Community in Xihu District, Nanchang City, was selected as a case study. The case study proves the effectiveness of this method, which has higher resolution and is more convenient for managers to make decisions.

On the Character and Causes of Inequality in Latin America

On the Character and Causes of Inequality in Latin America

The Representation of Urban Shanty Towns in Literature Written in the Era of Japanese Colonial Rule - Focusing on Saryang Kim’s Novel Toseonglang -

The Representation of Urban Shanty Towns in Literature Written in the Era of Japanese Colonial Rule - Focusing on Saryang Kim’s Novel Toseonglang -

URBAN SHANTY TOWN RECOGNITION BASED ON HIGH-RESOLUTION REMOTE SENSING IMAGES AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL MONITORING FEATURES – A CASE STUDY OF NANNING CITY

Abstract. Urban shanty towns are communities that has contiguous old and dilapidated houses with more than 2000 square meters built-up area or more than 50 households. This study makes attempts to extract shanty towns in Nanning City using the product of Census and TripleSat satellite images. With 0.8-meter high-resolution remote sensing images, five texture characteristics (energy, contrast, maximum probability, and inverse difference moment) of shanty towns are trained and analyzed through GLCM. In this study, samples of shanty town are well classified with 98.2 % producer accuracy of unsupervised classification and 73.2 % supervised classification correctness. Low-rise and mid-rise residential blocks in Nanning City are classified into 4 different types by using k-means clustering and nearest neighbour classification respectively. This study initially establish texture feature descriptions of different types of residential areas, especially low-rise and mid-rise buildings, which would help city administrator evaluate residential blocks and reconstruction shanty towns.

Seizures, cysticercosis and rural-to-urban migration: the PERU MIGRANT study.

To examine the prevalence of seizures, epilepsy and seropositivity to cysticercosis in rural villagers (cysticercosis-endemic setting), rural-to-urban migrants into a non-endemic urban shanty town and urban inhabitants of the same non-endemic shanty town. Three Peruvian populations (n=985) originally recruited into a study about chronic diseases and migration were studied. These groups included rural inhabitants from an endemic region (n=200), long-term rural-to-urban migrants (n=589) and individuals living in the same urban setting (n=196). Seizure disorders were detected by a survey, and a neurologist examined positive respondents. Serum samples from 981/985 individuals were processed for cysticercosis antibodies on immunoblot. Epilepsy prevalence (per 1000 people) was 15.3 in the urban group, 35.6 in migrants and 25 in rural inhabitants. A gradient in cysticercosis antibody seroprevalence was observed: urban 2%, migrant 13.5% and rural group 18% (P<0.05). A similarly increasing pattern of higher seroprevalence was observed among migrants by age at migration. In rural villagers, there was strong evidence of an association between positive serology and having seizures (P=0.011) but such an association was not observed in long-term migrants or in urban residents. In the entire study population, compared with seronegative participants, those with strong antibody reactions (≥4 antibody bands) were more likely to have epilepsy (P<0.001). It is not only international migration that affects cysticercosis endemicity; internal migration can also affect patterns of endemicity within an endemic country. The neurological consequences of cysticercosis infection likely outlast the antibody response for years after rural-to-urban migration.

Effects of glutamine alone or in combination with zinc and vitamin A on growth, intestinal barrier function, stress and satiety-related hormones in Brazilian shantytown children

OBJECTIVE:To determine the impact of supplemental zinc, vitamin A, and glutamine alone or in combination on growth, intestinal barrier function, stress and satiety-related hormones among Brazilian shantytown children with low median height-for-age z-scores.METHODS:A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted in children aged two months to nine years from the urban shanty compound community of Fortaleza, Brazil. Demographic and anthropometric information was assessed. The random treatment groups available for testing (a total of 120 children) were as follows: (1) glutamine alone, n = 38; (2) glutamine plus vitamin A plus zinc, n = 37; and a placebo (zinc plus vitamin A vehicle) plus glycine (isonitrogenous to glutamine) control treatment, n = 38. Leptin, adiponectin, insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), and plasma levels of cortisol were measured with immune-enzymatic assays; urinary lactulose/mannitol and serum amino acids were measured with high-performance liquid chromatography. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00133406.RESULTS:Glutamine treatment significantly improved weight-for-height z-scores compared to the placebo-glycine control treatment. Either glutamine alone or all nutrients combined prevented disruption of the intestinal barrier function, as measured by the percentage of lactulose urinary excretion and the lactulose:mannitol absorption ratio. Plasma leptin was negatively correlated with plasma glutamine (p = 0.002) and arginine (p = 0.001) levels at baseline. After glutamine treatment, leptin was correlated with weight-for-age (WAZ) and weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ) (p≤0.002) at a 4-month follow-up. In addition, glutamine and all combined nutrients (glutamine, vitamin A, and zinc) improved the intestinal barrier function in these children.CONCLUSION:Taken together, these findings reveal the benefits of glutamine alone or in combination with other gut-trophic nutrients in growing children via interactions with leptin.

Utopia and Its New Enemies: Intellectuals, Elitism, and the Commonwealth of Learning

Intellectuals are a problem, and they should be-both to themselves and others. Fortified by this conviction, I was provoked to write this essay when, while reading The Guardian, I came across a brief commentary-Julian Baggini's Wisdom's Folly-on Plato's account of trial of Socrates, at which latter purportedly proclaims, the unexamined is not worth living. After pointing out that this maxim sounds unobjectionable (par. 1), Baggini goes on to suggest that actually it is profoundly because would be no need to exhort us to examine our if we did not think that there were human beings who do not, and so have valueless, lives (par.2). Let us consider this claim carefully. Of course assuming that one's fellow humans are themselves valueless or bestial is deplorable-worse than elitist. Such assumptions are bound up in a sense of personal superiority, enabled by structures that often remain unknown or unacknowledged. However, decrying structures that position one's fellow creatures unfavorably is a different matter. Baggini himself points out in defense of his denunciation of examined life as that [t]he bulk of humankind, today and in history, has been far too busy struggling for survival to engage in philosophical analyses (par. 3). About struggle, at least, he is right.As I type this sentence in 2012, one fifth of global human population in absolute poverty, unable to secure even minimally adequate subsistence, and majority of world is simply poor, scraping by in urban shanty towns or rural villages, with little leisure for lengthy philosophical analyses. 1 Nevertheless, Baggini's suspicion that examined life-under conditions of structural inequality-is merely a philosopher's ruse for asserting superiority over struggling majority, even if it were often true, would be a misdirected critique. To be sure, no one could assert that so-called intellectuals are always dedicated to justice; many have supported horrendous regimes or, at very least, been unwittingly complicit with ordinary oppression. Raymond Williams's withering assessment of culture of teashop at Cambridge supports Baggini's charge of elitism all too well.2 But, for Williams, such dubious elitist characters do not exhaust meaning of intellectual. His approach is dialectical, and, therefore, he considers multiple effects of intellectuals in totality. As soon as one follows Williams's example, fecund areas start to emerge in Baggini's universally bleak landscape: critical function of intellectuals and avid participation of many intellectuals in struggles of oppressed. To bracket from picture intellectuals whose examined life propels them toward critique of injustice and affiliation with movements of progressive resistance is, willy-nilly, to ally-however unintentially-with right-wing populists. After all, Ayn Rand novels and Fox News produce strikingly similar accusations to Baggini's when they denounce supposed university and media elite.This convergence is worth pointing out because usual upshot of such attitudes toward intellectuals is historically frequent but lamentable one of advancing putative social (from either above or below) by administration of symbolic or actual hemlock-that is by purging, exiling, ridiculing, ignoring, or censoring intellectual elites (including Socrates, to whom Baggini points an accusatory finger, without mentioning hemlock part). This strategy does not produce equality in a desirable sense. I will argue instead that a leveling worth having depends upon universalizing conditions that enable examined life, or-as Pierre Bourdieu once evocatively put it-the struggle for universalization of privileged conditions of existence which render pursuit of universal possible (110). …

Zinc, vitamin A, and glutamine supplementation in Brazilian shantytown children at risk for diarrhea results in sex-specific improvements in verbal learning

OBJECTIVE:To identify the impact of supplemental zinc, vitamin A, and glutamine, alone or in combination, on long-term cognitive outcomes among Brazilian shantytown children with low median height-for-age z-scores.METHODS:A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted in children aged three months to nine years old from the urban shanty compound community of Fortaleza, Brazil. Demographic and anthropometric information was assessed. The random treatment groups available for cognitive testing (total of 167 children) were: (1) placebo, n = 25; (2) glutamine, n = 23; (3) zinc, n = 18; (4) vitamin A, n = 19; (5) glutamine+zinc, n = 20; (6) glutamine+vitamin A, n = 21; (7) zinc+vitamin A, n = 23; and (8) glutamine+zinc+vitamin A, n = 18. Neuropsychological tests were administered for the cognitive domains of non-verbal intelligence and abstraction, psychomotor speed, verbal memory and recall ability, and semantic and phonetic verbal fluency. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS, version 16.0. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00133406.RESULTS:Girls receiving a combination of glutamine, zinc, and vitamin A had higher mean age-adjusted verbal learning scores than girls receiving only placebo (9.5 versus 6.4, p = 0.007) and girls receiving zinc+vitamin A (9.5 versus 6.5, p = 0.006). Similar group differences were not found between male study children.CONCLUSIONS:The findings suggest that combination therapy offers a sex-specific advantage on tests of verbal learning, similar to that seen among female patients following traumatic brain injury.

Hurricane Mitch and Honduras: An illustration of population vulnerability

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch, the fourth strongest Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history, destroyed much of Honduras. Hardest hit were more vulnerable populations of the rural hillside and the urban shanty towns. In the 20 years prior to Hurricane Mitch, a series of neoliberal policies shifted the tax burden to the poor and focused resources on export crops, forcing subsistence farmers to the less arable hillside and leading to deforestation. These moves left the already marginalized in a precarious position when Hurricane Mitch struck as topsoil was washed away and mudslides destroyed hillside farms. Additionally, gendered patterns of privilege were obvious. Men were encouraged to migrate to work leaving women to restore the farm, care for the children, and tend to the elderly. As disaster management is centered on preparation multiple lessons can be learned. First, in preparation multiway information systems need to include actors from the local level and embrace those marginalized by society. Second, women need to be seen as assets not victims and their well-being need to be taken into consideration outside of the family construct. And third, reconstruction effort need to be about building better not faster.

Study on the Reconstruction Implementation Barriers of Urban Shanty Towns of Harbin

Solving the housing problem for urban low-income people is one of important issues of the housing policy and urban planning in China. Shanty towns which were left from old days are now the main housing source for low-income populations; therefore, shanty town reconstruction has been taken as a resolution for solving housing problems for low-income people. However, the current land policy, real estate development policy, urban planning laws and regulations are insufficient in solving the shanty town reconstruction difficulties and more likely become barriers of it. A number of indicators such as building density, per capita living space, land prices and floor area ratio are used to determine how successful the shanty town reconstruction being implemented. In this article, a flexible solution on political and regulatory basis for solving shanty town reconstruction difficulties will be proposed by systematically analyzing various economical and technical indicators.

The effect of rural-to-urban migration on social capital and common mental disorders: PERU MIGRANT study

ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate whether there are differences in the prevalence of common mental disorders and social capital between migrant and non-migrant groups in Peru.MethodologyThe PERU MIGRANT study is a cross-sectional study comprising three groups: an urban group from a shanty town in Lima; a rural group from a community in Ayacucho-Peru; and a migrant group originally from Ayacucho currently living in the same urban shanty town. Common mental disorders were assessed using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and social capital was assessed using the Short Social Capital Assessment Tool (SASCAT). Poisson regression with robust standard errors was used to estimate prevalence ratios.ResultsThe overall prevalence of common mental disorders was 39.4%; the highest prevalence was observed in the rural group. Similar patterns were observed for cognitive social capital and structural social capital. However after adjustment for sex, age, family income and education, all but one of the significant relationships was attenuated, suggesting that in this population migration per se does not impact on common mental health disorders or social capital.ConclusionsIn the PERU MIGRANT study, we did not observe a difference in the prevalence of common mental disorders, cognitive and structural social capital between migrant and urban groups. This pattern of associations was also similar in rural and urban groups, except that a higher prevalence ratio of structural social capital was observed in the rural group.

ApoE polymorphisms and diarrheal outcomes in Brazilian shanty town children

A series of studies have shown that the heavy burdens of diarrheal diseases in the first 2 formative years of life in children living in urban shanty towns have negative effects on physical and cognitive development lasting into later childhood. We have shown that APOE4 is relatively common in shanty town children living in Brazil (13.4%) and suggest that APOE4 has a protective role in cognitive development as well as weight-for-height in children with heavy burdens of diarrhea in early childhood (64/123; 52%), despite being a marker for cognitive decline with Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases later in life. APOE2 frequency was higher among children with heaviest diarrhea burdens during the first 2 years of life, as detected by PCR using the restriction fragment length polymorphism method, raising the possibility that ApoE-cholesterol balance might be critical for growth and cognitive development under the stress of heavy diarrhea burdens and when an enriched fat diet is insufficient. These findings provide a potential explanation for the survival advantage in evolution of genes, which might raise cholesterol levels during heavy stress of diarrhea burdens and malnutrition early in life.

Seasonal change in nutritional status among young children in an urban shanty town in Peru

Seasonal variation in nutritional status among young children has been described in rural populations, but in few urban settings. We examined seasonality in 7 years of nutritional surveillance data from an urban shanty town near Lima, Peru, where childen 0–35 months old were measured at intervals of 4–5 months. We compared nutritional status by month, using generalized estimating equations to account for the inter-correlations among measurements of the same person at different times. The periodicity of the seasonal variation was found to fit a model in which the month of the year was sine-transformed, and this sine-transformed model was used to examine possible interactions with age, sex and year of examination. A total of 38 626 measurements was available from 11 333 children. In late winter, mean weight-for-height was an estimated 0.38 Z score higher than in late summer. The seasonal effect occurred at all ages, in both sexes, and in each year of surveillance. The amplitude was greatest for children 6–23 months old. The summer trough in weight-for-height was lower in 1989 than in other years; children who experienced this summer low had lower mean height-for-age in subsequent years. The seasonal variation in nutritional status may be related to differences in dietary intake, or to the higher prevalence of bacterial diarrhoea in summer than in winter. The more marked drop in weight-for-height in 1989 and subsequent trough in height-for-age may be related to political and economic changes than adversely affected food access in Peru.

African Capitalism, State Power, and Economic Development

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Looking beyond oral rehydration therapy.

Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) is a simple effective and cost-effective means of increasing child survival in developing countries; however any lasting impact on diarrheal diseases requires preventive measures as well as treatment. Programs that have be found to decrease the incidence of childhood diarrhea include breastfeeding promotion immunization against measles improvements in the water supply and education about the importance of hand washing. Many developing countries need not only preventive programs but also an adequate infrastructure for delivering primary health care. Given the increase in the number of urban shanty towns and the accompanying unsanitary living conditions an innovative approach to urban primary health care is a priority. Moreover any crash programs of health education in the mass media must be coordinated with other activities in health so that the message can be reinforced. Since most countries have a better infrastructure in education than in health school teachers and school children are often a more effective means of changing behavior in traditional communities than the mass media.