Untitled - Rebel Studies Library

30 PLANET OF SLUMS
Similar rational-choice models can be specified for all cities, generating
a huge array of locally specific tenure and settlement types. The
typology displayed in Figure 8 is an analytic simplification that abstracts
from locally important features for the sake of global comparability.
Other analysts might give priority to legal housing status (formal versus
inJormaf), but I think most urban newcomers' first decision is whether
or not they can afford to locate near the principal job concentrations
(core versus periphery).
A. Metro Core
B. Periphery
1. Formal
(a) tenements
(i) hand-me-downs
(ii) built for poor
(b) public housing
Figure 8
Slum Typology
(c) hostels, flophouses, etc.
2. Informal
(a) squatters
(i) authorized
(ii) unauthorized
(b) pavement-dwellers
1. Forma!
(a) private rental
(b) public housing
2. Informal
(a) pirate subdivisions
(i) owner-occupied
(ii) rental
(b) squatters
(i) authorized (including site-and-service)
(ii) unauthorized
3. Refugee Camps
THE PREVALENCE OF SLUMS 31
In the First World, of course, there is an archetypal distinction
between "donut" -shaped American cities, with poor people concentrated
in derelict cores and inner suburbs, and European "saucer" cities,
with immigrant and unemployed populations marooned in highrise
housing on the urban outskirts. The American poor, so to speak, live on
Mercury; the European poor, on Neptune or Pluto. As Figure 9 illustrates,
Third World slum-dwellers occupy a variety of urban orbits, \vith
the greatest concentration in lowrise peripheries. In contrast to Europe,
public housing for the poor in the South is an exception - Hong Kong,
Singapore, China - rather than the rule. Somewhere between one fifth
and one third of the urban poor live within or close to the urban core,
mainly in older rental multifamily housing.
1. Inner-City Poverty
In North American and European cities, there is a basic distinction
between "hand-me-down" housing, such as Harlem brownstones and
Dublin Georgians, and built-for-the-poor tenements, such as Berlin's
Figure 9
Where the Poor Live39
(percent of poor population)
Inner-city slums Peripheral slums
Karachi 34 66
Khartoum 17 83
Lusaka 34
66
Mexico City 27
73
Mumbai 20 80
Rio de Janeiro 23 77
39 Keith Pezzoli, "Mexico's Urban Housing Environments," in Brian Aldrich and
Ranvinder Sandhu (eds.), Housing the Urban Poor: Policy and Praaice in Developing
Co untries, London 1995, p 145; K. Sivaramakrishnan, "Urban Governance: Changing
Realities," in Michael Cohen et aI., (eds), Preparingfor the Urban Futur e: Global Pressures
and Local Fo rces, Washington, nc. 1997, p. 229; Mariana Fix, Pedro Arantes, and
Giselle M. Tanaka, "Sao-Paulo, Brazil," UN-HABITAT Case Study, London 2003,
p. 9; Jacquemin, Urban Development and New To wns in the Third Wo rld, p. 89.