A shanty town (also called a squatter settlement) is a slum settlement (sometimes illegal or unauthorized) of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: often plywood, corrugated metal and sheets of plastic. Shanty towns, which are usually built on the periphery of cities, often do not have proper sanitation, electricity or telephone services.
Shanty is derived from the Irish words "sean" (pronounced shan) meaning "old" and "ti" meaning "house".
Shanty towns are mostly found in developing nations, or partially developed nations with an unequal distribution of wealth. In extreme cases, shanty towns have populations approaching that of a city. As of 2005[update], one billion people, one-sixth of the world's population, live in shanty towns.[1]
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Since construction is informal and unguided by urban planning, there is a near total absence of formal street grids, numbered streets, sewage network, electricity, or telephones. Even if these resources are present, they are likely to be disorganized, old or inferior. Shanty towns also tend to lack basic services present in more formally organized settlements, including policing, medical services and fire fighting. Fires are a particular danger for shanty towns not only for the lack of fire fighting stations and the difficulty fire trucks have traversing the absence of formal street grids,[2] but also because of the high density of buildings and flammability of materials used in construction[3] A sweeping fire on the hills of Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong, in late 1953 left 53,000 squatter dwellers homeless, prompting the colonial government to institute a resettlement estate system.
Shanty towns have high rates of crime, suicide, drug use and disease. However the observer Georg Gerster has noted (with specific reference to the invasões of Brasilia), "squatter settlements [as opposed to slums], despite their unattractive building materials, may also be places of hope, scenes of a counter-culture, with an encouraging potential for change and a strong upward impetus." (1978)[4] Stewart Brand has also written, more recently, that "squatter cities are Green. They have maximum density—a million people per square mile in Mumbai—and minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi ... Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, Jan Chipchase from Nokia found that people leave their lights on all day. In most slums recycling is literally a way of life." (2010)[5]
Shanty towns are present in a number of countries. The largest shanty town in Asia is the Orangi Township, in Karachi, Pakistan.[6][7] while the largest in Africa is Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa. While shanty towns are less common in Europe, the growing influx of illegal immigrants have fueled shantytowns in cities commonly used as a point of entry into the EU, including Athens and Patras in Greece.[8]
In francophone countries, shanty towns are referred to as bidonvilles (French for "can town"); such countries include Tunisia, Haiti, and France itself – see bidonvilles in France.
Other countries with shanty towns include India, South Africa (where they are often called squatter camps) or imijondolo, the Philippines (often called squatter areas), Venezuela (where they are known as barrios), Brazil (favelas), Argentina (villas miseria), West Indies such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (where they are known as Shanty town), and Peru (where they are known as "young towns"). There are also shanty town population in countries such as Bangladesh[9] and the People's Republic of China.[10][11][12]
Although shantytowns are less common in first world countries, there are some cities that suffer from the shanty town condition. In Madrid, Spain, a low-class neighborhood named La Cañada Real (which is considered a shanty town) has no schools, nurseries or health clinics. Some homes have no running water and rubble and trash is everywhere.[13] In Portugal, shanty towns known as "barracas" are made up of immigrants from former Portuguese African colonies and Gypsies from Romania. The settlements are so bad that they can be compared to other shanty towns in third world countries.[14] In the United States, some cities such as Newark and Oakland suffer from high rates of poverty (28% in Newark and 17% in Oakland) and lead to the creation of tent cities. Other settlements in developed countries that are comparable to shanty towns include the Colonias on the border between the United States and Mexico, and bidonvilles in France, which may exist in the peripheries of some cities.
While most shanty towns begin as precarious establishments haphazardly thrown together without basic social and civil services, over time many have undergone a significant amount of development.[15] Often the residents themselves are responsible for the major improvements.[16] Community organizations sometimes working alongside NGO's, private companies, and the government, setup connections to the municipal water supply, pave roads, and build local schools.[16] Many of these shanties have become middle class suburbs. One such extreme example is the Los Olivos Neighborhood of Lima, Peru. The Megaplaza shopping mall, one of Lima's largest, along with gated communities, casinos, and even plastic surgery clinics, are just a few of many developments that have transformed what used to be a decrepit shanty.[16] Brazilian favelas have also seen huge improvements in recent years, enough so to attract tourists who flock to catch a glimpse of the colorful lifestyle perched atop Rio de Janeiro's highlands.[17] Development occurs over a long period of time and newer towns still lack basic services. Nevertheless there has been a general trend whereby shanties undergo gradual improvements, rather than relocation to even more distant parts of a metropolis and replacement by gated communities constructed over their ruins.[18]