The Slum

Slum was originally used mainly in the phrase "back slum",which mean back room and later back alley.The origin of the word was from the Irish phrase 'S lom é',meaning exposed vulnerable place.The Etimologist Eric Patridge says flately that it is "of unknown origin".

                         Other terms that are often used for interchangeably with the "Slum" include shany town,fevela,ski row,borrio,ghetto and "The Hood,"although each of thiis vary in the meaning.Slums are distinguished from the shany towns and the fevelas in that the later initially are low-class settlements,whereas slums are generally constructed on as respectable,often prestigious communities.Skid row refers to high homeless population .By contrast,identification of slum is solely based on the socio-economic criteria,not on racial,ethnic or religious criteria.The Hood is used to describe the high minority population ,from a shortening of "the neighbourhood'.

                                                                                                                                     Image showing Slum

Characteristics:

           Characteristics associated wih slums vary from place to place.Slums are usually categorise by urban decay,high rates of poverty,and unemployement.They are commonly used as the "breeding groungds" for social problems such as crimes,alcoholism,drug addiction,high rates of mental illness and sucide.In many countries they exhibit high rates of diseases due to unsanitation,malnutrition,and lack of basic health care.

    A UN expert group has created an operational definition for  slumsa an area comprises of the following characteristics:                                                                                           inadequate acess of safe water,inadequate acess of sanitation,and other infra structure;poor structural quality of housing;over crowing;and insecure residential status

 Low socio-economic  status of its residents in other common characteristics is given for a slum.

 In many slums,especially in poor countries they live i very narrow alley so that their is no passage for the vehicles(ambulance and fire trucks).The lack of services make garbage collection allows rubbish to a huge quantities.The lack of infra structure is casued by the informal feature of the settlements and no  planning for poor government officials.In additional informal settlemaents may get brunt by the man-made disasters,natural calamities,tropical stroms.Frie is also a serious problem.

Many slum dwellers employ themselves  in the informal economy.This can include street dwellind,drug dealing,domestic work and prostitution.In some slums people recycle are even trash of different goods(from household garbage to electronics)for a living-selling either the odd usable goods or stripping broken goods for parts or raw materials.

Growth and count measures:

Recent years their is a dramatic increase in the number of slums due to urbanization in the Third world.The number of people living in the slums of india are doubled in the past to decades and now exceeds the population of Britain,The Indian government has announced.

              Many governments attempted to solve the problems of  Slums by clearing away the old decrepit housing and replacing it with the modern housing with the well equipped sanitation.The displacements of the slums is aided by the fact that many are squatter settlements whose properties are not recognized by the state.This process is more common in the third world.Slum clearenceoften takes the form of eminent domain and urban renewal projects,and often the former residents are not welcommed in to the renewed residence.

                                                                                       Map showing the location of 30 biggest 'mega-slum's" in the world.

        In  some countries,some leaders adressed this situation by rescuing the rural property rights to support traditional agriculture,however this situation has hostility from capitalists and cooperations.it also tends to be relativey unpopular with the slum communities themselves,as it involves the moving out of the city back to the countryside,a reverse of rural-urban migration that originally brought many of them in to the city.Critics argue that clearence of the slum problems and simply redistribute the poverty to less valuable real estate.Where communities have been moved to new housing,social cohesion may be lost.Their is a growing moment of demad a global ban of 'Slum clearence programmes' and other forms of mass evictions.