Slums: The true non-Hollywood story

By: Amal

Most of us have watched, or at least heard of, the movie Slumdog Millionaire, the multiple Oscar winner about a boy from the slums of Mumbai who ends up winning the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Unfortunately, for most of the estimated one billion people worldwide living in slums there is no Hollywood, and poverty is inescapable.

It is important to understand what a slum is. UN-HABITAT defines it as, “a run-down part of a city with substandard housing, squalor, and a lack of security.” One of the contributing factors to the creation of slums is urbanization, which is the moving of people from rural to urban areas, most often in order to find work and improved living conditions.

In developing countries, around 60 million people move into cities each year. Over the next two decades, urban centres in Asia and Africa are expected to double in population. The sheer number of migrants to cities is making it nearly impossible for infrastructure such as roads, sewers and water supply to keep up with the population growth. This means that cities that were seen as beacons of opportunity rarely live up to the expectation of the people who move there. Instead, many migrants tend to live on the outskirts of the city in communities of small, poorly-built shacks.

This overcrowding is made worse by the lack of sewage systems and medical services, which causes diseases to spread rapidly and further decreases the living conditions for the slum’s inhabitants. Urban planning is essential to help cities adapt to the rapid population growth they are experiencing – and will continue to experience. So next time you see a Hollywood movie about the slums, don’t forget that for one billion people the reality is no picture-perfect ending. To explore the issue further, visit the UN Habitat website.