Ashanty town[a] is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties orshacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such ascorrugated iron sheets. A typical shanty town issquatted and, at least initially, lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity and street drainage. Over time, shanty towns may develop their infrastructure and even change into middle class neighbourhoods.[citation needed] They can be smallinformal settlements or they can house millions of people.
First used in North America to designate a shack, the termshanty is likely derived from Frenchchantier (construction site and associated low-level workers' quarters), or alternatively fromScottish Gaelicsean (pronounced[ʃɛn]) meaning 'old' andtaigh (pronounced[tʰɤj]) meaning 'house[hold]'.
Globally, some of the largest shanty towns areCiudad Neza in Mexico,Orangi in Pakistan andDharavi in India. They are known by various names in different places, such asfavela in Brazil,villa miseria in Argentina andgecekondu in Turkey. Shanty towns are mostly found indeveloping nations, but also in the cities ofdeveloped nations, such asAthens andMadrid.Cañada Real is considered the largest informal settlement in Europe. Shanty towns are sometimes found on places such asrailway sidings, swampland or disputed building projects. InSouth Africa, squatter camps, often referred to as "plakkerskampe", directly translated from theAfrikaans word for squatter camps, often start and grow rapidly on vacant land or public spaces within or close to cities and towns, where there may be nearby work opportunities, without the cost of transport.
Shanty towns tend to begin as improvised shelters onsquatted land. People build shacks from whatever materials are easy to acquire, for example wood or mud. There are no facilities such as electricity, gas, sewerage or running water. The squatters choose areas such as railway sidings, preservation areas or disputed building projects.[1] Swiss journalistGeorg Gerster noted, with specific reference to theinvasões ofBrasília, that "squatter settlements [as opposed toslums], 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".[2]Stewart Brand observed that shanty towns areenvironmentally friendly, with people recycling as much as possible and tending to travel by foot, bicycle, rickshaw orshared taxi rather than car, due to poverty.[3]
While most shanty towns begin as precarious establishments haphazardly thrown together without basic social and civil services, over time, some have undergone a certain amount of development. Often the residents themselves are responsible for the major improvements.[4] Community organizations sometimes working alongsideNGOs, private companies, and the government, set up connections to the municipal water supply, pave roads, and build local schools.[4] Some of these shanties have become middle classsuburbs. One such example is theLos Olivos neighbourhood ofLima, Peru, which now containsgated communities,casinos, and plastic surgery clinics.[4]
Some Brazilianfavelas have also seen improvements in the 21st century, and can even attract tourists.[5] Development occurs over a long period of time, and newer towns—and many older ones—still lack basic services. Nevertheless, there has been a general trend whereby shanties undergo gradual improvements, rather than relocation to even more distant parts of a metropolis.[6][failed verification]
In Africa, many shanty towns are starting to implement the use ofcomposting toilets[7] andsolar panels.[8] In India, people living in slums have access to cell phones and the internet.[9]
Other African shanty towns have even become popular tourist attractions.Soweto (SOuthWEst TOwnship), an old squatter camp fromapartheid-era South Africa is now classified as a city within a city, with a population of almost 2 million. The "Soweto Towers" vertical adventure centre is in Soweto,[10] and there are guided excursions, often including a Shisa-nyama.
Pope Francis argued in his 2015 encyclical letterLaudato si' that shanty town settlements should be developed, if possible, rather than people being moved on and their settlements destroyed. He and theCatholic Church'sCouncil for Justice and Peace have emphasised the need for information,involvement andchoice being offered to people being moved on.[11][12]
Shanty towns are present in a number ofdeveloping countries. InFrancophone countries, shanty towns are referred to asbidonvilles (French for "can town"); such countries includeHaiti, whereCité Soleil houses between 200,000 and 300,000 people on the edge ofPort-au-Prince.[13]
In 2016, 62% of Africa's population was living in shanty towns.[14]
Squatter camps in South Africa typically use cheap, and easily acquired building materials such as corrugated tin sheets to build shacks. Offering very little protection against extreme weather conditions, these squatter camps, often built near streams or rivers due to the steady water supply, are often subjected to flash floods. They are also prone to runaway fires due to the close proximity they are built in. They often cause a great deal of damage to naturally occurring ecosystems, both directly, and indirectly. An example of severe indirect damage is the use of washing detergents, and refuse disposal in the nearby water source, which can often be seen for hundreds of kilometers down stream.
Due to the lack of infrastructure, and the cost of basic services, such as water and electricity, the overall squatted area is often barren, with the ground sweeped and stamped to minimise dust, and where gardening is simply impossible and unaffordable. Illegal and dangerous electricity connections are abundant, another danger for fires, and electrical accidents.
TheJoe Slovo squatter camp, inCape Town, houses an estimated 20,000 people.[15] Shack dwellers in South Africa organise themselves in groups such asAbahlali baseMjondolo andWestern Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.[16][better source needed]
InNairobi, the capital ofKenya,Kibera has between 200,000 and 1 million residents. There is no running water and inhabitants use aflying toilet in which faeces are collected in a plastic bag then thrown away.[17]Mathare is a collection of slums which contain around 500,000 people.[18] In Zambia, the informal housing areas are known askombonis and approximately 80% of the people in the capitalLusaka are living in them.[19]
The largest shanty town in Asia isOrangi inKarachi, Pakistan, which had an estimated 1.5 million inhabitants in 2011.[17] TheOrangi Pilot Project aims to lift local people out of poverty. It was begun byAkhtar Hameed Khan and run byParveen Rehman until her murder in 2013.[20] Residents laid sewage pipes themselves and almost all of Orangi's 8,000 streets are now connected.[21] In India, an estimated one million people live inDharavi, a shanty town built on a formermangrove swamp inMumbai.[17] It is one of the most densely populated places on the globe.[22] In 2011, there were at least four improvised settlements in Mumbai containing even more people.[23] There are in total 3.4 million people living in the 5,000 informal settlements of Bangladesh's capital cityDhaka.[24]
Thailand has 5,500 informal settlements, one of the largest being a shanty town in theKhlong Toei District ofBangkok.[25] In China, 171urban villages were demolished before the2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.[26] As of 2005, there were 346 shanty towns in Beijing, housing 1.5 million people.[27] AuthorRobert Neuwirth wrote that around six million people, half the population ofIstanbul lived ingecekondu areas.[28]
In Hong Kong, theKowloon Walled City housed up to 50,000 people,[29] withrooftop slums currently providing some additionalhousing.
The world's largest shanty town isCiudad Neza or Neza-Chalco-Itza, which is part of the city of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, next to Mexico City. Estimates of its population range from 1.2 million to 4 million.[14][17]
Brazil has manyfavelas. InRio de Janeiro, Brazil, it was calculated in 2000 that over 20% of its 6.5 million inhabitants were living in more than 600 favelas. For example,Rocinha is home to an estimated 80,000 inhabitants. It has developed into a densely populated neighbourhood with some buildings reaching six storeys high. There are theatres, schools, nurseries and local newspapers.[1]
In Argentina, shanty towns are known asvillas miseria. As of 2011, there were 500,000 people living in 864 informal settlements in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area. In Peru, they are known aspueblos jóvenes ("young towns"), ascampamentos inChile, and asasentamientos in Guatemala.
During the 1930sGreat Depression, shanty towns nicknamedHoovervilles sprang up across the United States.[30] Following the Great Depression, squatters lived in shacks on landfill sites beside the Martin Pena canal in Puerto Rico and were still there in 2010.[31] More recently, cities such asNewark andOakland have witnessed the creation oftent cities. TheUmoja Village shanty town was squatted in 2006 in Miami, Florida.[32] There are alsocolonias near the border with Mexico.[33]
Although shanty towns are now generally less common indeveloped countries in Europe, they still exist. The growinginflux of migrants has fuelled shantytowns in cities commonly used as a point of entry into the European Union, includingAthens andPatras in Greece.[34] TheCalais Jungle in France had grown to over 8,000 people by the time of its clearance in October 2016.[35]Bidonvilles exist in the peripheries of some French cities. The state authorities recorded 16,399 people living in 391 slums across the country in 2012. Of these, 41% lived on the outskirts of Paris.[36] In the Paris metropolitan region, many contemporary shantytowns have been inhabited since the early 2000s by Romanian and Bulgarian migrants, often framed in public debate as a "Roma" issue. Local municipal policies also shape residents' expectations and capacities for integration, alongside recurring cycles of relocation programmes and systematic evictions.[37]
InMadrid, Spain, a shanty town namedCañada Real is considered the largest informal settlement in Europe[38]. It has an estimated 8,628 inhabitants, who are mainly Spanish, Romani and north African, but only one mobile health unit.[39][40] After 40 years, property developers began to take an interest in the site in 2012.[41]
In Italy, the largest concentration of shantytowns are in Campania Region, and especially in Naples metropolitan region.[42]
There have been cardboard cities inLondon andBelgrade. In some cases, shanty towns can persist in gentrified areas that local governments have yet to redevelop, or in regions of political dispute. A major historical example was theKowloon Walled City inHong Kong.[43]
InAustralia andNew Zealand, there were many shanty towns beforeWorld War II, some of which still exist (for exampleWyee,[44] a suburb of theCentral Coast).
Many films have been shot in shanty towns.Slumdog Millionaire centres on characters who spend most of their lives in Indian shanty towns.[45] The Brazilian filmCity of God was set inCidade de Deus and filmed in another favela, called Cidade Alta.[46]White Elephant, a 2012 Argentinian movie, is set in avilla miseria in Buenos Aires.[47] The South African filmDistrict 9 is largely set in atownship called Chiawelo, from which people had been forcibly resettled.[48]
The 2016 Chinese TV seriesHousing tells the story of shantytown clearance in Beiliang, Baotou, Inner Mongolia.[49]
A 2023 Nigerian crime thriller titledShanty Town was released on Netflix on January 20, 2023. It is a six-part series that tells the story of a ruthless leader named Scar (Chidi Mokeme) who handles a lot of dirty business and is popularly regarded as the King of Shanty Town.[50]
Video games such asMax Payne 3 have levels located in fictional shanty towns.[51]
Reggae singerDesmond Dekker sang a song called "007 (Shanty Town)".[52]
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