I am proposing to research environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities of informal settlements in Southeast Asia because I want to find out why affordable housing and slum upgrading projects succeed or fail in order to help my reader understand how state and non-state actors are addressing rapid urbanization in the “Global South” through development initiatives.
The Habitat III Issue Papers from the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development, officially defined informal settlements and the issues within them. Informal settlements, also known colloquially as slums, were defined by UN Habitat as “residential areas where 1) inhabitants have no security of tenure vis-à-vis the land or dwellings they inhabit, with modalities ranging from squatting to informal rental housing, 2) the neighbourhoods usually lack, or are cut off from, basic services and city infrastructure and 3) the housing may not comply with current planning and building regulations, and is often situated in geographically and environmentally hazardous areas” (1). As recognized by the international community, living conditions for slum dwellers are categorized by five depravations: “1) access to improved water, 2) access to improved sanitation facilities, 3) sufficient living area – not overcrowded, 4) structural quality/durability of dwellings, and 5) security of tenure” (2). My overarching research puzzle aims to better understand the environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities experienced by slum dwellers. Through understanding these, I will discover why urban development projects (e.g. affordable housing and participatory slum upgrading) have either failed or succeeded. The purpose of this research is to understand how state and non-state actors address rapid urbanization in the Global South through development initiatives.
Through my readings I have found three distinct buckets, which are my key independent variables: state-led development (by national governments), community-led development (by slum dwellers themselves) and international community-led development (by multinational organizations and the private-sector). From the variety of case studies I have read, it is evident that these three buckets often overlap to create institutional complexity. As stated by Auerbach, LeBas, Post & Weitz-Shapiro: “By institutional complexity, we refer to environments in which governance and services are provided by overlapping institutions and across multiple jurisdictions, by large and complicated bureaucracies, and by both state and non-state actors” (264). This article was a collection of essays that highlighted innovative solutions to informal settlements that combined top-down and bottom-up processes. Unlike the UN reports, which I had read prior, it prioritizes the role of community-led development (bottom-up), specifically on improving interactions between the state and its citizens.
In a 2016 UN-Habitat evaluation report released by the UN Secretary-General, UN-Habitat’s role in overseeing “the implementation, follow-up and review of the [New Urban Agenda]” (15) was established. The New Urban Agenda (NUA) prompts a top-down approach for the urban development of informal settlements meaning that the international community will have greater control over the actions of the state, and in-turn the actions of communities within the state. Urban development initiatives brought about by these actors fall into two distinct categories: slum upgrading, which builds upon and improves conditions within informal settlements or affordable housing, which constructs new infrastructure to replace and eventually rid cities of informal settlements. The two articles I had read and written about in my last post exemplify case studies of each. In Cape Town, South Africa, government-led and private-sector driven affordable housing failed to alleviate the vulnerabilities experienced by slum dwellers in informal settlements (Bradlow, Bolnick, Shearing 267) In one of the largest informal settlements in Kenya, the strategy of slum upgrading, which was a largely community-led effort with the legal help from non-state actors, succeeded in improving overall quality of life for the slum’s inhabitants (Toomey 234).
With rapid urbanization and climate change, the topic of informal settlements has become all the more significant. Development practice conducted by state and non-state actors to address environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities experienced by slum dwellers is what demands explanation.
- What explains the success/failure of urban development projects for informal settlements within Southeast Asia?
- Why has the affordable housing model failed to reduce environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities of slum dwellers in Southeast Asia?
Notes
[1] Toomey, Bernard. “Slums of Hope: Land Tenure Reforms, Local Economic …” May 2010. Accessed September 24, 2018. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690941003784317.
[2] Bradlow, Benjamin, Joel Bolnick, and Clifford Shearing. “Housing, Institutions, Money: The Failures and Promise of Human Settlements Policy and Practice in South Africa.” Environment and Urbanization 23, no. 1 (2011): 267-75. doi:10.1177/0956247810392272.
Work Cited
UN Habitat, Habitat III Issue Papers 22 – Informal Settlements (Quito: United Nations (2015), available from https://unhabitat.org/
Auerbach, A., LeBas, A., Post, A., & Weitz-Shapiro, R. (n.d.). State, Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South. Studies in Comparative International Development, 53(3), 261–280. doi:10.1007/s12116-018-9269-y
United Nations, General Assembly, Implementation of the outcomes of the United Nations Conferences on Human Settlements and on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development and strengthening of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat): report of the Secretary-General, A/71/1006 (1 August 2017), available from http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/HLP/UN-Habitat-Assessment- Report-3%20August-2017.pdf
Overall you are on the right track here, Naila. Keep working on identifying more precise explanations or analytical categories that other scholars have used as you continue your research. What you list here as potential IVs — “…my key independent variables: state-led development (by national governments), community-led development (by slum dwellers themselves) and international community-led development (by multinational organizations and the private-sector…” — are really large conceptual groupings that would have numerous variables within them. What are some of these more precise variables or explanations for why these projects might succeed or fail? In thinking about your draft questions, you have a good general research question in #1. The case-specific question needs some work, though. What would a case-specific research question (identifying particular cases for analysis/comparison, drawing on the ideas of control and variation from Baglione) look like?
Hi Professor Boesenecker, I thought over the suggestions you’ve made here and during office hours on Tuesday and have make some major changes. I have created two big conceptual buckets: slum upgrading and affordable housing. These are the two strategies being used to address informal settlements. Within these two conceptual buckets, I identify three main independent variables: land tenure (presence or absence), community participation (presence or absence), actors leading developing project (variety: international community (IC) -led, state-led, or community-led). As for finding specific cases to explore, I am comparing urban development projects in India and South Africa.