Realigning urban development: five points, five minutes
Prompted by recognition by UN-Habitat, David Satterthwaite distils five key points from his research work over the years – all of which are testament to the knowledge and experiences of local people and grassroots organisations.
An urban slum in Hanoi, Vietnam (Photo: United Nations Photo, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
I was honoured and thrilled to receive a Scroll of Honour by UN-Habitat in their 2024 awards. I was only sad that my health did not allow me to travel to the ceremony on World Habitat Day, 7 October, in Querétaro, Mexico. And I was denied electronic access because my passport was out of date (if you’re puzzled by this, so was I!).
The five recipients of UN-Habitat’s Scroll of Honour were each invited to write short descriptions of their work. Below are the informal notes I prepared about my own research findings.
1. If you are serious about reducing urban poverty, you need some idea of its scale and nature
I have worked with Diana Mitlin over many years, measuring poverty with local teams in different cities. What we found was a massive undercount because poverty lines were set too low – often based mainly on food prices, and in large part because housing costs were not factored in.
We asked community leaders from a range of Asian nations how they would count urban poverty and they were very critical of poverty lines used by governments and international agencies. We were struck by the experience of grassroots leader, Ruby Papeleras in the Philippines, when she took on the World Bank.
She said: "So many poverty studies are being done everywhere, all the time, but by people who have never been poor, never been evicted, never had to survive on earnings that are never enough.
"We have experienced all those things, and we know what poverty really means. We hope this study, by poor people themselves, comes closer to the truth. We can make our own poverty lines and set our minimum expenditure required to meet our various basic needs."
2. We are not seeing the key components of housing as ‘housing’
We see housing just as structures. Not the place where people access piped water, toilets, electricity connection and have a legally-recognised address. These essentials are often only classified as ‘infrastructure’.
I had a long list of what housing should ideally provide for its occupants, but some key elements are to have:
- A good location in regard to labour markets, friends, family and services
- Choice, especially where a person or family need to be mobile
- A registered address and other home-related documents that are needed to access to public services and entitlements. This includes government schools where only those with legal addresses get access for their children. And importantly, an address that allows them to get on the voter register and receive postal deliveries. This in turn can allow low-income groups to be organised and have a productive engagement with government. Finally, a registered address is also needed for house insurance, to open a bank account or obtain a formal bank loan.
3. Invest in capacity for disaster risk reduction and preparedness
This needs to be firmly rooted in reducing urban poverty and mindful of climate change impacts in every aspect. This includes building resilience in housing, infrastructure and services in informal settlements – working with their inhabitants.
It’s going to take a lot of ingenuity and strong (private and public) partners to make informal settlements sufficiently resilient. But there are huge overlaps between disaster preparedness, poverty reduction and climate change adaptation.
4. Learn from each other
This award brings greater visibility to the amazing work of our partners, including grassroots organisations and local governments. Informal settlement upgrading schemes need to be developed together with their inhabitants and local community organisations, with support from local funds. We can all learn from the 32 national slum/shack dweller federations that are affiliates of SDI (Slum/Shack Dwellers International) and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights.
I urge policymakers to draw on the 30 years’ experience of these organisations and to use grassroots-level surveys, maps and censuses to promote upgrading and develop partnerships with government agencies.
The quality and depth of these surveys is often far superior to conventional versions, and has been done in thousands of informal settlements in over 500 cities, as part of ‘Know your City’ campaigns. If you do not rely on subsidies there is no limit on what you can achieve. For example, the Orangi Pilot Project urban sanitation model in Pakistan is reaching more than one million people.
5. More work is needed
The many and diverse determinants or influences on housing quality and cost listed above mean that there are many possible areas for much-needed interventions.
The final word goes to my research programme’s founder, Jorge Hardoy, who was at the meeting in 1977 which discussed how to re-structure UN-Habitat. At that time it was known as the ‘Committee on Housing, Building and Planning’ and based in New York. Jorge was later asked: “What influence has your work had?”
He replied: “Almost none as individuals. But collectively, we have impact. Especially if we work together and draw on the resources and capacities of informal settlement dwellers and local governments.”
The points summarised above draw heavily on the work of Jorge Hardoy and John F C Turner.
Further reading
How urban poor community leaders define and measure poverty (2015), Somsook Boonyabancha, Thomas Kerr, Environment and Urbanization 27(2) 637-656.
