Some Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may be overambitious but this is not the case with target 11 of MDG 7 – to improve the living conditions of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. With the number of slum dwellers expected to double to nearly two billion by 2030, it is essential to vastly exceed this modest target.

A paper by Geoffrey Payne sets out a twin-track approach towards existing and potential future slums. The author argues that innovative approaches to improving tenure security in existing unauthorised settlements can improve living conditions and revising regulations can reduce the need for future slums.

Poor people need to live close to locations where they can earn a living. Yet places where employment prospects are greatest are invariably those where land prices are greatest. Upgrading schemes that provide full title at a nominal cost can encourage poor households to sell their newly acquired asset and move to squat elsewhere. Poorly planned interventions may result in an increase in informal settlements rather than a decrease, lead to eviction of tenants and increase litigation, especially where land records are unclear.

Reserving large amounts of land for roads or banning settlement anywhere near a railway line can prove costly. Establishing a minimum official plot size larger than the size of plots regularly occupied in informal settlements can discourage the private sector from meeting the needs of lower income households.

Experience suggests that providing a form of tenure to the residents of existing unauthorised settlements, sufficient to ensure protection from eviction is desirable, together with reforms to permit people to use their dwellings for a range of purposes and allow them to obtain basic services. Intermediate tenure options, combined with regulatory audits of planning regulations, standards and administrative procedures can significantly improve living conditions.

Evidence from the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh is representative of experience elsewhere:

• High planning standards derived from inherited or imported norms, rather than local realities, become standard practice.
• Officials – who are trained to assume that the existing standards and regulations exist to protect the public interest – may resist change.
• Finding relocation sites that are within reasonable distance of existing employment areas and public utilities is a priority task, especially in terms of making such alternatives affordable.

Several urban projects in Cambodia are exploring a twin-track approach. They show the need for regulatory reform to reduce entry costs to new urban housing in ways which provide sufficient security and options for long-term incremental improvements. This involves:

• realising that low-income households are generally modest in their tenure needs: they do not necessarily require titles as long as they can be guaranteed reasonable security and handy access to places of employment
• permitting the most efficient use of available land and relaxing constraints on the forms of development and uses to which people can put their plots
• reducing the attraction to higher-income groups of buying out low-income residents
• overcoming procedural constraints to tenure upgrading
• ensuring that around 65 percent of developable land is allocated for private use as residential, commercial or industrial plots.

Source(s):
‘Getting ahead of the game: A twin-track approach to improving existing slums and reducing the need for future slums’, Geoffrey Payne and Associates, Environment & Urbanization, vol 17, no 1, pp135-145, by Geoffrey Payne, April 2005 Full document.

Funded by: Cities Alliance, UN-Habitat (Fukuoka) and GTZ (Cambodia)

id21 Research Highlight: 28 September 2005

Further Information:
Geoffrey Payne
Geoffrey Payne and Associates
34 Inglis Road
Ealing Common
London W5 3RL
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 8992 2683
Fax: +44 (0)20 8992 2683
Contact the contributor: gkpayne@gpa.org.uk

Geoffrey Payne and Associates, UK

Other related links:
'Can urban housing regulations be pro-poor?'

'Safe as houses? Securing urban land tenure and property rights'

'Cities without slums: knowledge-sharing needed urgently'

'Addressing the challenge of slums'

'Relocation or upgrading? Improving the welfare of slum dwellers'

UN Habitat Slum Upgrading Facility

Cities Alliance - cities without slums