Slums

A slum is a residential area with substandard housing that is poorly serviced and/or overcrowded, and therefore unhealthy, unsafe, and socially undesirable. A single dwelling can fit this description, but the term is usually reserved for larger areas, rural or more commonly urban. Slums, like the poor who inhabit them, have always existed, but became more extensive with the rise of the industrial city. Rising incomes, and stricter building and health regulations, have helped to virtually eliminate them in the developed world, where the main housing problems are now those of affordability and homelessness. Slums have become ubiquitous in the developing world, where they commonly take the form of squatter settlements. The term slum is culturally defined and pejorative, with social as well as physical connotations. It is usually applied by outsiders, often inappropriately and to justify public intervention in neighborhood affairs, through programs such as slum clearance, and the term has often been resented and resisted by local residents. Since the 1970s the preferred intervention has been slum upgrading. The discourse of slums has always been contested.