Africa’s slums are growing at twice the rate of its cities. By some accounts, sub-Saharan Africa will have upwards of 332 million slum dwellers by 2015. While millions of dollars have been spent improving the conditions in Africa’s urban informal settlements and the lives of the people who live therein, overall these efforts have amounted to little more than a drop in the ocean. Join our six panelists to explore the options for stemming the growth of these sprawling settlements and improving conditions in those slums that already exist: Irene Karanja of Muungano Support Trust (SDI) (Kenya); Claudio Torres of the UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Unit (PSUP) (Kenya); architect, urban planner, and World Bank Municipal Development Program consultant Sara Candiracci (Mozambique); Aditya Kumar of the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC) (SDI) (South Africa); Jhono Bennett of the University of Johannesburg (South Africa); and Marie Huchzermeyer of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).
Click on the pictures of the panelists to see each panelist’s perspective below.
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Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust, a secretariat of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International Federation (SDI) (Kenya)
Over the last 25 years, slum dwellers from cities in Africa have successfully mobilized into collections of Federations of the Urban Poor.
These federations have collected their own financial resources in the form of savings and data pools, creating citywide profiles and extensive slum censuses. Unknown to the world, slum federations have managed to produce a large volume of documented knowledge about themselves that has transformed how the government delivers important services to its poor citizens and how financial instruments can be innovated by financial institutions to serve the needs of the poor.
Using data collected from the profiles and censuses, Muungano Support Trust, a local NGO working with the federation of Kenya, has provided advisory services to the Government of Kenya and the World Bank, in order to help them intervene and provide housing solutions to over 10,000 families in the Kibera and Mukuru areas of Nairobi.
The trust has also worked with university planning schools from the local and international academia community to influence how transforming planning discourse can untrap informal human settlements from the snares of historically rigid city planning standards.
The private sector has grand opportunities to turn urban poor communities into important players within the city. Financial resources from the poor are beginning to challenge and put pressure on the private sector to innovate solutions. Federations have interventions that are facilitating this to happen.
Data collected by communities with the support and technical capacity of organizations such as Muungano Support Trust, shows that there is a missing link that government interventions are not able to fill and development assistance is failing to cover.
Insecurity of tenure remains one of the biggest challenges to improving the lives of slum dwellers in Nairobi. The government needs to release land for human settlement, whether it be public, private, or contested. If this does not happen, development aid will continue to subsidize the costs required for technical services to innovate various kinds of solutions for what are essentially locked scenarios!
Irene Karanja is the founding Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust (MuST), a secretariat of the Slum/Shack Dwellers Federation in Kenya. She is a specialist in participatory research, community organizing and capacity building for the urban poor. For over six years, she has transformed the use of participatory techniques for data collection into a major instrument for planning the upgrading of slums. She has organized a strong constituency of slum dwellers to assume leadership of these settlements through savings groups, housing cooperatives and women’s associations.
Architect, UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP) (Kenya)
African countries represent the majority of the least developed countries (LCD). Taking into account the fact that in most of these countries, the urban population growth is expanding at a faster pace than the national one, it is important to make three considerations in answering the question: “What will it take to make slum upgrading work in African urban centres?”
Governments should be prepared to ‘give away’. National and local governments should weigh out the costs and risks of perpetuating the status quo and should fulfill the right of adequate housing for all at a pace that copes with the increase in poor urban households. They should prioritise, for example, the free provision of land for the urban poor, in the understanding that there will be no real estate profit and that no particular individual will benefit — a challenging task in a context where African post-independence elites have generally improved their own lives with little regard to equity and social justice.
Strategies for the provision of adequate housing for the urban poor should go beyond market logic. In trying to come up with housing strategies that appeal to investors, the focus has shifted from the upgrading of the slum dwellers’ living conditions to the beautification of particularly degraded areas. This unchaining of a series of transaction costs results in a gentrification process that relocates the problem without giving it a solution. Slum upgrading strategies should strictly be conceived through a human rights approach.
Adequate housing strategies should trigger self-relief dynamics in overcoming poverty. The problem of urban poverty is too big to miss the opportunity to engage concerned communities in devising its solution. The Latin-American slum upgrading experience has demonstrated that giving the right initial impulse to poor urban communities actually encourages a progressive and proactive self-upgrading attitude in slum residents, reducing the need for government funds to improve the living conditions of the urban poor. A strong involvement of the community can also help to reduce the risk of benefiting the wrong people, a common shortfall in superficially planned slum upgrading interventions.
Claudio Torres is an architect with 10 years experience in the field of slum upgrading and housing in an African context. His work has taken him from the slums of Nairobi to settlements in Somaliland and South Sudan where he has worked as an architect, monitoring and evaluation expert, project manager, and construction expert. Torres has worked extensively in Nairobi’s Mathare valley slum with the Italian NGO COOPI, helping to set up an office in the field from which he coordinated a series of different programs. He is currently a consultant for the Participatory Slum Upgrading Program (PSUP), a division of UN-Habitat.
Architect, Urban Planner and Consultant, World Bank Municipal Development Program (Mozambique)
Urbanization in Africa is growing and national governments and local authorities are faced with the challenge of guiding cities’ growth while dealing with other constraints, including limited financial resources; weak institutional, management, and technical capacities; lack of proper urban policies and financial mechanisms to mobilize and regulate investments.
To strengthen the ability of African cities to generate wealth, prosperity, and economic and human development, national governments and local authorities need to define a clear vision for the future of their cities and their informal settlements.
Cities must be seen and treated as complex organisms whose elements are interconnected. Informal settlements should be seen as an integral part of this organism, and not as a “sick body” to be fought. They constitute a precious resource for the city and its population and must be included in the urban grid.
Each and every stakeholder, whether it be the national government, local authorities, civil society, the community, the private sector, or the donor community, have a role to play and must be partners in the development and implementation of this vision for the city. In particular, the active participation of the local community is essential in finding lasting solutions, and to guarantee ownership and sustainability, social cohesion, and integration.
The implementation of comprehensive and integrated improvement plans in informal areas would be ideal; however, it takes a long time and requires considerable financial resources. Considering the constraints in local financial and institutional capabilities, it is preferable to adopt an incremental approach, whereby small-scale interventions are first envisioned and planned in an extensive development plan, and then are carried out gradually through community participation.
Priority must be given to the improvement and provision of infrastructure, basic services, accessibility, safety, and the creation of economic opportunities. Concurrently, special attention should be given to outdoor public spaces, where a vital part of the community’s social, cultural, and economic activities is conducted. Improving these spaces would improve the framework of daily life and bring dignity, beauty, and utility to informal and poor areas with minimal resources.
Sara Candiracci is an architect and urban planner with 10 years experience in the design, management, and implementation of several urban planning and slum upgrading projects in Latin America and Africa with different organizations including UN-Habitat, the Inter-American Development Bank, and various NGOs. She is now working at the Municipality of Maputo, Mozambique, as Urban Planning Advisor for the World Bank Municipal Development Program. She is also conducting her PhD research on the potential use of urban cultural heritage in urban regeneration and planning, considering Maputo as case of study.
Deputy Director, Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), an affiliate of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (South Africa)
Over the last 20 years, the South African government has been hailed as having the most progressive housing and poverty policy environments in the continent. Besides making welfare grants available to previously marginalized communities, it has made provisions to provide housing to any citizen earning under R3,500 ($350)/month.
Although more than 2.3 million subsidized homes have been built across the country, the impacts of the housing policy have fallen short. Informal settlements have gone up by 900 percent (from 300 to 2,700) while there are an estimated 2.1 million people on the waiting list for state-subsidized housing.
Realizing the constraints of the housing program, the State has rapidly shifted its emphasis to informal settlement upgrading. New regulatory frameworks like Outcome 8 have been developed to allow for provision of basic services and tenure rights.
While the aims of Outcome 8 and its aligned policies have been well defined, in my view there are still gaps in addressing the bigger issues. Firstly, how incremental informal settlement upgrading is implemented must be defined: are we trying to address tenure rights or basic services, land or housing, dependency on the state or self-reliance through livelihoods? Secondly, there is the manner in which informal settlement upgrading is being rolled out. Currently it doesn’t account for strong community, civil society, and NGO participation, nor does it address the broader issue of project finance, outsourcing, and party politics.
The process of upgrading is about learning and letting go, about making space for communities to innovate with the state, about creating a city-wide network/movement that can change the spatial patterns of the city and strengthen citizenship.
Aditya Kumar is the technical coordinator and deputy director for the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC), affiliated to Shack/Slum Dwellers International, currently working with informal settlement and backyarder dwellers of South Africa. His previous experience has included post-war reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps (Lebanon), post-earthquake disaster housing reconstruction (India), affordable and social housing and large urban development projects (Los Angeles and Boston). His work has fostered multi-stakeholder partnerships between local communities, CBOs, government bodies, academic institutions, and International NGOs, with a key focus on strengthening community-driven design, planning, and implementation. The reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps has also been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Architect and Lecturer and Researcher, University of Johannesburg
The National Development Plan’s Outcome 8 agreement is behind the South African government’s current shift towards in situ housing upgrading as a means of redevelopment. This goal of upgrading 400,000 informal settlements has been developed under the mandate of the National Upgrade Support Program.
Large-scale construction consortiums are working alongside the government, in collaboration with various planning, architectural, and non-governmental entities on the current Reconstruction & Development Program.
While these initiatives are creating an institutional framework to begin addressing the needs of informal settlement residents in South Africa, there is little focus across the board on training effective practitioners who can play crucial intermediary roles not only in informal settlement upgrading but also in the nation’s spatial redevelopment.
From my experience in this field, it seems that there are a disproportionately small number of practitioners who have the understanding, experience, or empathy required to engage with the dynamics of informal settlement communities and the complexity of working within the social, economic, and political intricacy that exists between grassroots entities and government structures.
A major factor for this condition is related to the lack of opportunities for spatial design practitioners (engineers, architects, planners, etc), to be exposed to these complex environments. As a result, many ‘professionals’, as well as many government officials, often display dangerously simplistic views on how to ‘fix’ the problems at hand.
From my work and experience in academia and the NGO sector, I believe that empathetic spatial design practitioners hold the key position to engage effectively at the ‘community’ level while addressing the larger spatial inequalities of post-apartheid South Africa.
My aim lies in understanding and sharing contextually appropriate training, practice, and precedents through critical engagement with South Africa’s residents of poor and unsafe living conditions in order to further develop this ‘additional role’ for socio-technical spatial design practice.
Jhono Bennett is an architect who works at the University of Johannesburg as a part-time lecturer and Independent researcher, while managing the operations of 1:1 — Agency of Engagement, a non-profit entity which he co-founded to provide a design-based collaborative service between grassroots organizations, professionals, academia, and government.
Masters Program in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)
Internationally, there has been unprecedented focus on ‘slums’ in the new millennium. In southern African cities, informal settlements are certainly a concern, although in Anglophone countries the legacy of British colonial planning has to some extent kept these settlements out of middle-class sight. Where informal settlements have intruded into visible locations, as for instance in Lusophone Luanda, recent efforts have been made to remove these to the city periphery. In South Africa, a somewhat reverse government discourse targeted ‘visible’ informal settlements for ‘in situ upgrading’. This approach was adopted by the high profile N2 Gateway Project in Cape Town, which originally targeted all informal settlements that lined the motorway from the airport to the historical city centre for upgrading. In the years that followed, this project morphed into the Luandan approach — the removal of visible informal settlements. In the Cape Town case, removal was to a controlled decanting camp on the far side of the airport. Yet the public was told that the commitment remained to ‘in situ upgrading’. The term was simply given a new meaning, namely for the state to demolish and then build new housing to modern standard for a different clientele.
With this juxtaposition of informal settlement treatment in Angola and South Africa, I’d like to provoke debate on the core meaning of ‘informal settlement upgrading’ as well as the political uses associated to the meaning. For me, the essence of in situ upgrading is the recognition of two important points. One is that the unevenly developing economies in southern Africa, in the absence of radical change, will not facilitate the replacement of all informal settlements with planned and fully serviced residential developments for the households currently in these settlements. This recognition prevents ‘wishing away’ the reality of urban informality. The other is that informal settlements result out of determination, initiative (often collective), creativity, and complex decisions by poor households. These must be respected and supported where possible.
Marie Huchzermeyer convenes and teaches in the masters programme in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. This base has allowed her to provide support to rights-based struggles from within informal settlement for ‘real’ in situ upgrading. Her recent work includes a 2011 book “Cities With ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to the City in Africa,” and a comparison with Brazil in a 2004 book, “Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil.”
Abu Dhabi, UAE
The daily struggle for water consumes the lives of the poor. Women wait hours in line for water that is often of questionable quality, paying exorbitant rates — often much higher than richer urban dwellers. Contaminated water steals the lives of millions of children each year. Husbands miss valuable work days, and leftover savings is often spent on medical bills from waterborne illnesses. Read more or join the discussion.
Rio de Janeiro has fairly good water service coverage, with only 1,5 percent of the city’s 32,908 households lacking proper service. The city has also made important improvements regarding sewer coverage in the past decade. According to Rio Como Vamos, in 2000 21 percent of the city’s households didn’t have sewer services, while ten years later, only five percent did not. Read more or join the discussion.
Compared to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt is much better off with regards to access to freshwater resources, primarily thanks to the Nile. With the majority of the country’s population densely situated along the river basin, government statistics show that 99 percent of the country’s population has access to water, and access in urban areas is 100 percent. However, these statistics drown the many other political, social and economic issues that surround the water sector. Read more or join the discussion.
Water has always been a source of great challenge as well as distress for the resident of Dhaka, a city of 15 million people. Growing populations result in ground water depletion and increasing pollution, which leads to a lack of surface water usability. These factors make water issues acute for the DWASA, the main government water supplier. The intensity of the problem deepens when it comes to the slum and squatter residents, who have little or no DWASA water supply because they live in unstable and illegal settlements. In addition to a crisis of access, the quality of DWASA water (bad smell, microorganisms, presence of ammonia and arsenic, excessive chlorination) poses a great threat to people’s health. Read more or join the discussion.
En otras palabras, este término quiere decir que el ser humano es un ente con un organismo complejo y con una mentalidad enredada que construye su vida con base en valores, conciencia, ética, motivaciones, deseos, personalidad, entre varios ingredientes. Estas variables se forjan en sociedad a través de la familia, amistades, comunidad, municipio, nación, grupos sociales, entre otros.
When looking at the map of covered areas, it is interesting to note that the best water and sewerage coverage isn’t necessarily found in the better-off areas, but in the neighborhoods closest to the city center. The center benefits from the best service provision, and the further away a neighborhood is from the center, the worse its service provision is. This is particularly evident in Rio’s southern area. Lagoa and Barra de Tijuca for example, are two upscale neighborhoods in the south of Rio far from the city center. These areas have worse water services than low-income neighborhoods such like Mare and Complexo do Alemão, which are located in Rio’s northern area, close to the city center.
The city’s main challenge is therefore to expand its water and sewerage services through urban upgrading programs in low-income neighborhoods, mostly in Rio’s southern and western areas. Some of these zones are also the city’s main expansion areas, where several constructions related to the upcoming mega events are taking place. Greater investment in basic urban services is necessary to achieve universal access to water and sewerage service in upcoming years.
Salah satu dampak yang tidak direncanakan dari kebijakan pembangunan ekonomi dan strategi rekayasa politik Orde Baru Suharto adalah fenomena menggelembungnya sektor informal di perkotaan. Secara akademik istilah sektor informal diperkenalkan pada tahun 1970an sebagai kelanjutan dari diskusi luas tentang isu-isu “urban bias” dan “why poor stay poor” argument utama dari Michael Lipton. Baca lebih lanjut.
“Welcome to Lagos” was a 2010 BBC documentary that introduced Vocal Slender to the world. Vocal – real name Eric Obuh – was a rapper by night, and a scavenger, at the Olusosun rubbish dump, by day. Read more.
Labour laws exist to protect employees from exploitation by their employers. Unfortunately, many companies and factories in Lagos do not adhere to these laws, leading to overworked, underpaid workers who perform in hostile, unhealthy, and dangerous work environments. In one recent case in Lagos, an employee lost his life while on duty in a Chinese-owned nylon manufacturing company with over 500 factory employees. This incident set off a series of worker protests against labour violations and unjust employment conduct. Read more or join the discussion.
The Makoko riverfront is an informal residential area that is Lagos’ largest and most visible slum. It is located right beside the busiest highway in the state, which is the most used route to link the mainland to Lagos Island. Makoko village is mostly made up of fishermen and their families, and it is here that the famous floating school is being built. This informal community has been a bone of contention for the state government for three main reasons: it is unsanctioned, shanties have expanding beyond the established boundary, and some of the erected shanties are dangerously close to electric lines and poles. Read more or join the discussion.
On July 13, 2010, approximately 15 buildings in the areas of Establ Antar and Ezbet Khairallah were demolished. As written in the 2011 Amnesty International report, families in these buildings were forced to remove their personal possessions and pay 200 LE (approximately $36 USD) for truck to take their belongings to alternative housing units in 6th of October City. Once the demolition began, security forces at the scene began to offload the belongings of 21 families, claiming that they were trying to cheat the enumeration process for free housing and they weren’t residents of the area. These families were then told that by paying 5000 LE ($890 USD) to a middle-man, they could be placed on the enumeration list. Read more or join the discussion.
Brazil has joined the group of countries that are experiencing massive protests concerning various public issues. In Brazil, these include the increased cost of public transportation, as well as concerns over the high costs of stadiums and World Cup infrastructure. Over the past few weeks, Rio and São Paulo have been the epicenters of clashes between protesters and the police. Some of these protests have been violent and have generated worry over a possible increase in violence throughout the country. Read more or join the discussion.
Mumbai’s quest to become a world-class city shines with rhetoric of “clean” and “green.” The efforts have spawned policies of making the city slum-free; demolitions, relocations and high-rise government slum redevelopment buildings define much of the existing plan and actions. Standing in between the government’s Shanghai dream and the existing state is 62 percent of the city’s population who lives in slums. The “eyesores” are taking up precious city land that has grown in value exponentially over the decades. Plans to deal with the impediments ignore the vibrant upgrading and development that has been taking place inside these settlements all over the city. Read more or join the discussion.
في اليوم الثالث عشر من يوليو سنة ٢٠١٠، تم هدم ما يقرب من ١٥ مبنى في منطقتي إسطبل عنتر وعزبة خير الله. بين تقرير منظمة العفو الدولي Amnesty International report 2011 أن العائلات التي كانت تعيش في هذه المساكن أجبرت على إزالة ممتلكاتهم الشخصية ودفع ٢٠٠ جنيها مصريا (حوالي ٣٦ دولار أمريكي) لشحن أمتعتهم إلى الوحدات السكنية البديلة في مدينة ٦ أكتوبر. عندما بدأت عملية الهدم، قامت قوات الأمن بإفراغ هذه الوحدات السكنية، مدعين أن هذه الاسر ليس لها الحق أن تعيش في هذه المباني لأنها حاولت غش عملية التعداد للحصول على السكن المجاني. ثم قيل لهؤلاء السكان أنهم يمكنهم دفع ٥٠٠٠ جنيه (٨٩٠ دولار أمريكي) لتسجيل اسمهم في قائمة التعداد.
As 2013 draws to a close, it is a good opportunity to reflect on what we have learned from cities in the URB.im network during the last year. Some of our community managers discuss the benefits of increased citizen participation in the planning and implementation of urban initiatives. Others highlight the effectiveness of programs that build the capacity of youth and women to be agents for poverty alleviation. Many discuss how to ensure that the benefits of economic growth and urban improvement extend to the most marginalized residents. Continue reading to learn more about our lessons learned and join the discussion to share your own.
Months later, a female photojournalist out on an assignment in an abandoned mill area in the center of Mumbai endured a similarly brutal assault and gang rape. As it turns out, the men had done this to ragpicker women in the area before, but few women, especially the poor, feel comfortable stepping forward. Mumbai has always been touted as a safe city for women, but incidents like these have rattled this sense of security.
Politics, technology, infrastructure development, and finance ruled the discussion board in 2013 and laid important cornerstones for future discussions on how the country will develop and evolve.
Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero was voted in on a slew of electoral promises — amongst which, to improve service delivery to the capital, improve the living standards of slum dwellers, and address the problem of Dandora, the city’s overflowing dumpsite. Ten months after elections, the promises are yet to be met: Kidero has held meetings with representatives of Nairobi’s different slums, where he reiterated his commitment to increasing employment opportunities for youth; his wife has made public donations to various slum orphanages; and the Dandora question is under discussion.
In infrastructure development, despite a few hiccups, work on Nairobi’s southern and eastern bypasses continued to move forward, as did the construction of Nairobi’s new international airline terminal, which was launched in December despite the chaos that followed the burning of the arrivals terminal in August this year. The Nairobi light commuter rail network opened a new station, the Safaricom Kasarani stadium was brought to completion, and Machakos county (part of the city’s larger metropolitan area) unveiled its ambitious development plan and how it intends to create Machowood, Kenya’s first dedicated film production studios.
Finance went from strength to strength as the Kenyan stock market continued to rise throughout the year and the government began to recognize that the most sustainable form of development was the one that came from the grassroots. As a result, efforts were stepped up to invest in youth and women’s savings groups through the newly introduced Uwezo Fund.
Makoko’s slum clearance, part of the city’s effort to make the city safer and more modernized, illustrates the importance of considering the social impact of urban planning and growth projects. The economic and social effects of this slum clearance on the communities are grave: residents become displaced, lose their shelter, sense of safety, and livelihood. Other initiatives in Makoko have been more successful: the innovative floating school project plans to make education more accessible to slum residents.
Por ejemplo, el mapeo comunitario en Nezahualcóyotl, facilitado por la Universidad de las Américas, identificó las variables de vulnerabilidad de la población; al igual que los pobladores de San Andrés Totoltepec en Tlalpan, impulsado por la Organización Fomento Solidario de la Vivienda (FOSOVI). Los habitantes de ambas localidades realizaron un diagnóstico comunitario para visualizar las carencias sociales que debían de satisfacer, así como los recursos disponibles para obtener soluciones. En este sentido, se da evidencia de que la misma población que se encuentra en situaciones de vulnerabilidad, puede generar sus propias soluciones y así ser una comunidad que desarrolla estrategias de vida. El factor elemental en estos modelos de desarrollo local ha sido la intervención de actores externos, como las organizaciones de la sociedad civil, que habilitan mecanismos que cohesionan el capital social de las personas y empoderan para que la población descubra su capacidad.
Hoy en día, la agenda de desarrollo rompe con el paradigma de los enfoques de políticas públicas desde arriba, para focalizar los esfuerzos en metodologías que permitan vincular a los diversos actores que juegan un rol activo en la promoción del bienestar. En este sentido, Enrique Betancourt, urbanista de la Ciudad de México, nos compartió en una entrevista, que uno de los grandes retos para esta ciudad es un paquete de acciones coordinadas — estrategias que integren el equipamiento e infraestructura con programas sociales y con un fuerte componente de participación ciudadana. Así mismo, la inclusión de la población marginada, como una tarea de planeación urbana, está relacionada con garantizar a las personas el derecho a la ciudad. Es decir el tutelaje de que todos accedan a los beneficios de vivir en comunidad, lo cual impulsa cambios de manera más rápida y eficiente. De acuerdo a Betancourt, es necesario borrar las barreras institucionales, sociales, y físicas que promueven que hasta ahora se dividan los ciudadanos de primera y segunda clase. Para lo anterior, es necesaria una sinergia de actores y del fortalecimiento de la capacidad de las organizaciones sociales para ofrecer la atención de servicios de manera descentralizada y abarcando a la población que aún no ha podido ejercer su derecho.
What’s more concerning is that not all of the hazardous waste each year is not all being generated domestically. Although there are laws that ban other countries from depositing their hazardous materials in India, loopholes in the system have perpetuated the exploitative practice. The passing on of the problem happens internally as well. Villagers around Bangalore, which produces 64,379 million tonnes of hazardous waste each year from 1,702 industries, complain that they are suffering from Bangalore’s waste being dumped on their lands. “It is well known that villages around Bangalore have become victim to the massive and largely illegal dumping of about 5,000 tonnes of solid waste generated daily in the city… Several villagers have died as a direct consequence of such dumping of toxic waste, and many more are suffering a wide range of infectious and chronic illnesses,” says a press release from the Environmental Support Group Trust.
Transportation infrastructure is a key factor in enhancing economic growth and quality of life. Still, many recent transportation initiatives, by focusing on cars and highways, have favored the rich and the middle class. The following articles explore ways to provide safe, affordable, eco-friendly, and reliable transportation to the poor in the Global South. Read on to learn more, then join the discussion below.
Despite a number of post-1994 initiatives, urban transport system problems persist. Recently (2006-2012), in the largest Public Private Partnership yet launched in South Africa, between the Gauteng Provincial Government and Bombela International Consortium, a rapid rail project worth R20 billion (US$ 2 billion) was implemented. The “Gautrain” rapid rail network consists of two spines: one (south-north) linking Johannesburg and Pretoria, and the other (west-east) linking the Sandton business district and OR Tambo International airport. Coupled with this, in 2007 the City began constructing an ambitious Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) known as the “Rea Vaya” (see Fig. 2).
In contrast to the BRT, the Gautrain, in catering purely for the affluent car owner/user, from a social perspective clearly suffers from the criticism of class/mobility-related exclusion; although this could be offset by a BRT system that, unlike the Gautrain where there is no clarity in providing mixed-income residential development around its stations, clearly allows for mixed-income along BRT corridors.
In 2008, Governor Fashola’s state government introduced the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) scheme through the Lagos Metropolitan Transport Authority (LAMATA) to improve road transport system and ultimately reduce congestion. The new fleet of buses were designed to be more comfortable, and introduced an organised system of public transportation. The pilot BRT transport scheme runs through 22 km of exclusive lanes, providing faster transport at affordable prices for commuters. Since its inception, a lot of positive impact has been recorded. Highlights recorded by the World Bank include:
Yet a solution from Chennai offers a comprehensive example for Mumbai on how to move toward sustainable, comprehensive mobility. In August, Shreya Gadepalli, of the Institute for Transportation Development Policy (ITDP), presented her work with a new initiative, the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA), at the ORF to share the progress Chennai has made and how it might apply to Mumbai.
১৯৬১ অধ্যাদেশে সপ্তম নম্বরের অধীনে বাংলাদেশ রোড ট্রান্সপোর্ট কর্পোরেশন (বি.আর.টি.সি) প্রতিষ্ঠিত হয়েছিল। এটি বাংলাদেশ সরকারের স্বীকৃত পরিবহন কর্পোরেশন যা সকল শ্রেণীর মানুষের জন্য সস্তা এবং আরামদায়ক ভ্রমন ব্যবস্থা প্রদানের জন্য প্রতিষ্ঠিত হয়। বর্তমানে বাংলাদেশে বি.আর.টি.সি এর ১,১১৬ টি বাস পুরো বাংলাদেশে চলাচল করছে কিন্তু এগুলো ৪৭ মিলিয়ন (প্রায় ২৬ শতাংশ) দরিদ্র মানুষের পরিবহন চাহিদা মিটাতে যথেষ্ট নয়।
Sebagai angkutan umum, Kopaja sering mendapat sorotan negatif dikarenakan alasan: Pertama, penumpang Kopaja sering berlebih hingga dua kali lipat sehingga rawan kejahatan seperti pencurian dan pelecehan. Kedua, Kopaja juga dianggap jauh dari aman sebab sering kali alat kemudi dan pengukur kecepatan yang seadanya. Banyak pengemudi mobil pribadi yang merasa terancam sebab cara menyetir sopir Kopaja yang ugal-ugalan dan sering melanggar rambu-rambu lalu lintas dan membahayakan pengguna jalan lain. Ketiga, Kopaja merupakan penyumbang besar polusi perkotaan disebabkan buruknya sistem pembuangan karbon yang cukup membahayakan bagi manusia dan lingkungan.
Iniciemos com o metrô. Embora ele tenha sido inaugurado faz quase 35 anos atrás e apresente um atendimento médio de 650 mil pessoas durante um dia útil, ele está subutilizado. Por exemplo, ele tem só 35 estações em quanto o de São Paulo, tem 62 e aquele de Buenos Aires tem 86. Também existem queixas constantes sobre a superlotação, contribuindo a percursos incômodos e inseguros.
Aunque la situación actual dista mucho de ser buena, el premio se ha otorgado a un proyecto actualmente en marcha y que puede redundar en una mejora significativa de la situación medioambiental. En primer lugar, está previsto que 200 autobuses híbridos comiencen a circular por Bogotá a partir del 15 de diciembre. Los buses, marca Volvo, son fabricados en Brasil y ensamblados en Colombia. Podrán circular tanto por los carriles de alta velocidad del Transmilenio como por rutas convencionales, pues tienen puertas a ambos lados. Está previsto que circulen por la Carrera 7º, una de las principales de la ciudad y por la que en la actualidad solo circulan busetas y coches particulares. Una vez que los autobuses híbridos comiencen a circular por esta carrera, sus elevados niveles de contaminación descenderán de forma significativa. Estos buses no necesitan conectarse a la red eléctrica para recargarse.
In light of these challenges, the Government of Ghana has signed the Basel Convention to regulate the flow of hazardous waste from industrialised nations. This has led to the formation of various committees and stakeholders to expedite action on toxic waste in the country. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has launched a number of projects to take care of toxic substances and to improve general sanitation in the metropolis. One important project, the construction of a central culvert in Accra’s largest landfill, was recently completed with the funding of the Department For International Development and the World Bank.