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Informal Settlement Upgrading Strategies: The Zimbabwean Experience

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Sustainable Cities and Communities

Definitions

Informal settlements are residential areas where housing units are constructed on land to which the occupants have no legal claim or which they occupy illegally and unplanned settlements and areas where housing does not comply with statutory plans and building regulations (unauthorized housing) and is often situated in geographically and environmentally hazardous areas (UN-Habitat 2003). In addition, informal settlements can be a form of real estate speculation for all income levels of urban residents, affluent and poor.

Slums are the most deprived and excluded form of informal settlements characterized by poverty and large agglomerations of dilapidated housing often located in the most hazardous urban land (World Bank 2008).

Informal settlement upgrading is a staged process of improvement of quality of life in informal settlements based on incremental provision of services and tenure (NUSP 2017).

Global South as a critical concept has several definitions. One needs to know...

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Correspondence to Abraham R. Matamanda .

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Matamanda, A.R., Mafuku, S.H., Mangara, F. (2020). Informal Settlement Upgrading Strategies: The Zimbabwean Experience. 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_8-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71061-7_8-1

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