the.future.of.urbanization

At present, slums are the most pressing issue that I feel I can address with my career. According to Mike Davis in Planet of Slums, “95% of this final buildout of humanity will occur in the urban areas of developing countries, whose populations will double to nearly 4 billion over the next generation.” 2 Urbanization has resulted in “slum-ification.” “Since 1970, slum growth everywhere in the South has outpaced urbanization per se.” 17 At this rate, ‘we will have only slums and no cities’ `Gautam Chatterjee 18 These areas constitute the majority of the global population. “Residents of slums, while only 6 percent of the city population of the developed countries, constitute a staggering 78.2 perent of urbanites in the least-developed countries: this equals fully a third of the global urban population.” 23 The housing that inhabits these areas are primarily informal. “ “ILO researcher has estimated that the formal housing markets in the Third World rarely supply more than 20 percent of new housing stock, so out of necessity, people to self-built shanties, informal rentals, pirate subdivisions, or the sidewalks.” 17 “Thus, cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood.” 19 Most important to remember is that “the slum was not the inevitable urban future,” nor does it have to remain so. 61

I personally am interested in slum pro-development (no redevelopment nor initial development) because it is the essence of combining the skills of architecture and urban planning. Physical housing must be rebuilt in an adequate way, but because of the mass horizontal monotony, it is essential that urban planning be deeply considered. To me, urban slum renewal addresses both the improvement of individual lives as well as the improvement on the macro-scale.

WHERE TO WORK

Highest percentage of slum-dwellings

            Ethiopia, Chad, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bombay, Mexico City/Dhaka, Lagos/Cairo/Karachi/Kinshasa/Sao Paulo/Shangai/Delhi

Largest slums by numbers

            China, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Phillippines, Turkey, Mexico, South Korea, Peru, USA, Egypt, Argentina, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan, Vietnam

Poorest urban populations

            Luanda, Maputo, Kinshasa, Cochabamba (Bolivia)

Etc

Angola, Bulgaria, Albania, Colombia, Malaysia, Zambia, Cambodia, Mongolia, ex-Soviet