Joe Slovo shanty town in Langa on the Cape Flats simmers after a fire (Cape Town, South Africa)

Shanty town near Tijuana, Mexico.

Cite Soleil, Haiti, 2002

The police crush another demonstration by the South African Shackdwellers' Movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, 28 September 2007

Shanty towns (also called squatter camps, favelas, slums or informal settlements) are often illegal or unauthorized settlements of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap plywood, corrugated metal, sheets of plastic and other found materials. Shanty towns, which are usually built in or close to major cities as a strategy to access urban resources, often do not have proper sanitation, electricity, or telephone services or metalled roads. States tend to try and remove shanty town dwellers to peripheral sites outside of cities. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1000x562, 314 KB) Joe Slovo informal settlement, also known as the Waterfront for its proximity to a sewage canal, simmers after a fire swept through the tightly-packed shacks. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1000x562, 314 KB) Joe Slovo informal settlement, also known as the Waterfront for its proximity to a sewage canal, simmers after a fire swept through the tightly-packed shacks. ... Langa is a village in the Harju County, Estonia, the center of the municipality of Padise. ... Landsat image of Cape Town and environs, looking roughly east. ... Nickname: Motto: Spes Bona (Latin for Good Hope) Location of the City of Cape Town in Western Cape Province Coordinates: , Country Province Municipality City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality Founded 1652 Government [1]  - Type City council  - Mayor Helen Zille  - City manager Achmat Ebrahim Area  - Total 2,499 km² (964. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2592 × 1944 pixel, file size: 2. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2592 × 1944 pixel, file size: 2. ... Tijuana (Spanish [], English usually []), is the largest city in the Mexican state of Baja California and the seat of the municipality of Tijuana. ... Image File history File links Cite_soliel3. ... Image File history File links Cite_soliel3. ... Cité Soleil (Kreyol: Site Soley) is a very densely populated neighborhood located directly west of downtown Port-au-Prince, Haďti. ... Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ... is the 271st day of the year (272nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... This article is about occupying land without permission. ... Look up favela in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Slums in Delhi, India. ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows what he found. ... A dwelling is a structure in which humans or other animals live. ... Towers of Hanoi constructed from plywood. ... Corrugated galvanised iron, commonly abbreviated CGI, is a building material composed of sheets of hot-dip galvanised mild steel cold-rolled to have a linear corrugated pattern in them. ... For other uses, see Plastic (disambiguation). ... E. Coli bacteria under magnification Sanitation is the hygienic disposal or recycling of waste, as well as the policy and practice of protecting health through hygienic measures. ... For delivered electrical power, see Electrical power industry. ... For other uses, see Telephone (disambiguation). ...

Shanty towns are mainly found in developing nations, or partially developed nations with an unequal distribution of wealth. In extreme cases, shanty towns have populations approaching that of their host city. Differences in national income equality around the world as measured by the national Gini coefficient. ...

Origins

Shanty towns tend to develop on the outskirts of cities. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, shanty towns, often called "Hoovervilles", appeared in cities across North America because of massive unemployment. Some were nicknamed "Hoovervilles" because the residents blamed the economic conditions on then President Herbert Hoover, whose decisions were popularly thought to have caused the depression. Similarly in Canada, hobo jungles were dubbed "Bennettville" after Prime Minister Bennett.^{[citation needed]} For other uses, see The Great Depression (disambiguation). ... North American redirects here. ... CIA figures for world unemployment rates, 2006 Unemployment is the state in which a person is without work, available to work, and is currently seeking work. ... Hooverville near Portland, Oregon Hooverville is a term describing a series of villages that appeared during the Great Depression in the United States from 1929 through the 1930s and 1940s. ... Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964), the thirty-first President of the United States (1929–1933), was a world-famous mining engineer and humanitarian administrator. ... WORLD OF WARCRAFT IS THE BEST GAME EVER INVENTED AND PLAY IT. IF YOU DONT PLAY WORLD OF WARCRAFT, YOU ARE A nOOb. ... Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett, PC, KC (July 3, 1870 – June 26, 1947) was the eleventh Prime Minister of Canada from August 7, 1930 to October 23, 1935. ...

The first recorded use of the word shanty, as meaning a crude dwelling, was in Ohio in 1820.^{[citation needed]} It may have been derived from the French Canadian word chantier, meaning hut in a lumber camp, from the French word for timberyard. Alternatively, it could have been derived from the Irish sean tigh, meaning "old house" or from the Nahuatl word chantli "home". This article is about the U.S. State. ... For the Spanish language as spoken in Mexico, see Mexican Spanish. ...

Dangers

Shanty town residences are almost always built without a license. Since construction is informal and unguided by urban planning, there is a near total absence of formal street grids, numbered streets, sanitation networks, 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 because of the close proximity of buildings and flammability of materials used in construction. Urban planning is concerned with the ordering and design of settlements, from the smallest towns to the worlds largest cities. ... A simple grid plan road map (Windermere, Florida). ... E. Coli bacteria under magnification Sanitation is the hygienic disposal or recycling of waste, as well as the policy and practice of protecting health through hygienic measures. ... For delivered electrical power, see Electrical power industry. ... For other uses, see Telephone (disambiguation). ...

Shanty towns usually have a high rates of crime, suicide, drug use, and disease. On the other hand, 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."^[1] For other uses, see Suicide (disambiguation). ... Recreational drug use is the use of psychoactive drugs for recreational rather than medical or spiritual purposes, although the distinction is not always clear. ... This article is about the medical term. ... George Gerster (b. ... Bras lia is the capital city of Brazil and is located in the center of the country in a federal district created in the state of Goi s. ...

Examples

Shanty towns are present in a number of countries including South Africa (where they are often called squatter camps) or imijondolo, the Philippines (often called squatter areas or barrios), Venezuela (where they are known as barrios), Brazil (favelas), West Indies such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (Where they are known as shanty towns), Peru (where they are known as pueblos jóvenes), and Haiti, where they are referred to as bidonvilles. This article is about occupying land without permission. ... Look up barrios in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up favela in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Caribbean or the West Indies is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. ... Shanty towns are units of irregular low-cost and self-constructed housing built on terrain seized and occupied illegally -- usually on lands belonging to third parties, most often located in the urban periphery of the cities. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

In many countries there are now large movements of shanty town residents which often face severe state repression. For example, in South Africa Mjondolo have become a significant political force in the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg and in Brazil the Movement of Workers Without a Roof (MTST) is very strong. For other uses, see Durban (disambiguation). ... Pietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city of the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. ...

Many countries have a name for marginal settlements:

• Asentamientos (settlements) in Guatemala
• Bidonvilles in Haití, France and other French-speaking countries
• Cantegriles in Uruguay
• Ciudades perdidas (lost cities) or Jacales in Mexico
• Colonias or Migrant camp along the Mexican-American border
• Favelas in Brazil
• Gecekondu in Turkey
• Katavlismos (campaments, referring to Roma settlements) in Greece
• Invasiones (invasions) in Ecuador and Colombia
• Khoshash in the Middle East
• Jhugi/Bustee/Zhopdi/Zhopadpatti in India
• Kachi abadi in Pakistan
• Kijiji in Kenya
• Mudduku in Sri Lanka
• Poblaciones Callampas (mushroom settlements), Poblas or Campamentos in Chile
• Chacarita in Paraguay
• Chabolas, rancheríos in Spain
• Pueblos jóvenes (young towns) or barriadas in Peru
• Ranchos or barrios in Venezuela
• Squatter camps or imijondolo in South Africa
• Villa miseria (poverty towns) in Argentina
• Bairro de Lata in Portugal
• Lušnynai in Lithuania
• Millwall in Tower Hamlets
• Barrio in Dominican Republic
• El Ghetto in Panama (though this has fallen into dis-use due to the transition of this places into habitable places)
• Precario or tugurrio in Costa Rica
• Setinggan or Rumah Kongsi in Malaysia (A local movie changed its name to 'Sting Garden', to the plot that a poor girl living in setinggans trying to attract a wealthy boy's heart)
• Kartonsko naselje (cardboard settlement) in Serbia

Korogocho (Kenya) see korogocho.org Australia Asentamientos are shanty towns inside and around Guatemala City. ... Colonias, as used along the U.S.-Mexican border, refer to rural, unincorporated settlements which often lack basic infrastructure and which are marked by poverty. ... The ethnonym Mexican-American describes United States citizens of Mexican ancestry (14 million in 2003) and Mexican citizens who reside in the US (10 million in 2003). ... Look up favela in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A gecekondu neighbourhood in Ankara Gecekondu is defined by The New Redhouse Portable English-Turkish Turkish-English Dictionary as a house put up quickly without proper permissions; squatters house; a shack of a house, shanty, shack. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up barrios in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Homes in a villa miseria in Rosario. ... The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is the London borough to the east of the City of London, north of the River Thames in East London. ... Kartonsko Naselje (Serbian Cyrillic: Картонско Насеље) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. ... Not to be confused with Republika Srpska. ...

See also

• Ghetto
• Poverty
• Refugee shelter
• Slum
• Squatting
• Tent city
• Skid row

For other uses, see Ghetto (disambiguation). ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows what he found. ... Refugee shelters include the most basic kind of structure created in the aftermath of a conflict or natural disaster as a temporary residence for victims who have lost or abandoned their homes. ... Slums in Delhi, India. ... For other uses, see squat. ... The term tent city covers a wide variety of usually temporary housing made of tents. ... The term skid row or skid road is used to refer to a run-down or dilapidated urban area. ...

References

External links

• Slate article about an economist proposing New Orleans to be reconstructed with shanties
• Website for a large movement of shanty town residents in South Africa
• Extreme Rich-Poor divides on Deputy-dog.com
• Cities Alliance
• Special issue of Mute Magazine on shanty towns, 2006
• Special issue of the Journal of Asian and African Studies on shanty town struggles, 2008