Definitions
Informal settlements have been defined as housing units built on land that inhabitants occupy illegally or to which they have no legal claim or as dwellings that are not in compliance with planning and building regulations (OECD 2001). Several other definitions for informal settlements have been proposed, but the most widely used is the one of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2015), according to which informal settlements are residential areas with three characteristics: (i) inhabitants have no security of tenure of the land or dwellings they inhabit; (ii) neighborhoods usually lack, or are cut off from, basic services and city infrastructure, and (iii) housing may not comply with current planning and building regulations and is often situated in geographically and environmentally hazardous areas.
Informal settlements range from squats in abandoned buildings, improvised homes in containers and shacks made of abandoned materials to long-established informal...
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Pereira, T.C.G., Xavier Junior, E.C. (2020). Informal Settlements, Slums, and Sites and Services. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P., Wall, T. (eds) Sustainable Cities and Communities. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71061-7_33-1
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