A shanty town, also known as a squatter area or settlement, is characterized by improvised buildings, typically constructed from readily available materials like mud, wood, corrugated iron sheets, plastic, and cardboard boxes. These settlements often lack basic infrastructure and are found in various countries around the world.
Shanty towns are present in a number of developing countries. Other countries with shanty towns include South Africa (where they are often called Townships) or imijondolo, Kenya (including the Kibera and Mathare slums), 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").
A shanty town near Cape Town, South Africa.
Location and Infrastructure
Shanty towns are sometimes found on places such as railway sidings, swampland or disputed building projects.
Since construction is informal and unguided by urban planning, there is typically no formal street grid, numbered or named streets.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
A typical shanty town is squatted and, at least initially, lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity and street drainage.
They lack basic services such as public transport, insect and disease control services.
In South Africa, squatter camps, often referred to as "plakkerskampe", directly translated from the Afrikaans word for squatter camps, often start and grow rapidly on vacant land or public spaces within or close to cities and towns, where there may be nearby work opportunities, without the cost of transport. In South Africa, squatter camps typically use cheap, and easily acquired building materials such as corrugated tin sheets to build shacks.
Offering very little protection against extreme weather conditions, these squatter camps, often built near streams or rivers due to the steady water supply, are often subjected to flash floods.
They are also prone to runaway fires due to the close proximity they are built in.
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
Due to the lack of infrastructure, and the cost of basic services, such as water and electricity, the overall squatted area is often barren, with the ground sweeped and stamped to minimise dust, and where gardening is simply impossible and unaffordable.
Dharavi Slum in Mumbai.
Social and Economic Characteristics
Shanty towns have high rates of crime, suicide, drug use and disease.
There are no facilities such as electricity, gas, sewerage or running water.
Some shanty towns have an informal economy, such as garbage scavenging, pottery-making, textiles, or leather works, providing some income. This allows the poor to earn a livelihood.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
One example is from Ezbet Al Nakhl, in Cairo Egypt, where garbage is sorted manually.
Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. A study from Nokia found that people leave their lights on all day.
Why South Africa is still so segregated
Development and Improvements
While most shanty towns begin as precarious establishments haphazardly thrown together without basic social and civil services, over time, some have undergone a certain amount of development.
Often the residents themselves are responsible for the major improvements.
Community organizations sometimes working alongside NGOs, private companies, and the government, set up connections to the municipal water supply, pave roads, and build local schools.
Some of these shanties have become middle class suburbs.
One such extreme example is the Los Olivos Neighborhood of Lima, Peru.
Some Brazilian favelas have also seen improvements in the 21st century, and can even attract tourists.
Development occurs over a long period of time, and newer towns-and many older ones-still lack basic services.
Pope Francis argued in his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato si' that shanty town settlements should be developed, if possible, rather than people being moved on and their settlements destroyed.
Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Examples Around the World
Shanty towns are present in a number of countries.
In francophone countries, shanty towns are referred to as bidonvilles (French for "can town" - can being a reference to tin metal); such countries include Tunisia and Haiti.
The largest shanty town in Asia is Orangi in Karachi, Pakistan.
In Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, Kibera has between 200,000 and 1 million residents.
The world's largest shanty town is Ciudad Neza or Neza-Chalco-Itza, which is part of the city of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, next to Mexico City.
Brazil has many favelas. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it was calculated in 2000 that over 20% of its 6.5 million inhabitants were living in more than 600 favelas.
As of 2011, there were 500,000 people living in 864 informal settlements in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area.
Although shanty towns are now generally less common in developed countries in Europe, they still exist. The growing influx of migrants has fuelled shantytowns in cities commonly used as a point of entry into the European Union, including Athens and Patras in Greece.
In Madrid, Spain, a shanty town named Cañada Real is considered the largest informal settlement in Europe.
Table of Selected Shanty Towns
| Name | Location | Estimated Population |
|---|---|---|
| Kibera | Nairobi, Kenya | 200,000 - 1,000,000 |
| Orangi | Karachi, Pakistan | 1,500,000 (in 2011) |
| Ciudad Neza | Mexico City, Mexico | N/A |
| Rocinha | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | 80,000 |
