In the City Slums

Abstract

The informal urban sector: it is one of those examples of economist’s jargon which brings a grey glaze across the eyes of the layman. Yet this is one of the most colourful, exciting, bizarre, sometimes squalid, but often amusing aspects of Third World development. It is the bustees of Calcutta, with ten-storey blocks of flats squashed into the gardens of older houses; the favellas of Rio, tumbling down the city’s many hills, under the shadow of the vast statue of Christ, yet an affront to the millionaires and bathing beauties of Copacabana and Ipinema; the slums of Nairobi, living permanently under threat of death by bulldozer; the incredibly crowded back streets of Hongkong.