“This report is mainly concerned with the shelter conditions of the majority of the urban poor. It is about how the poor struggle to survive within urban areas, mainly through informal shelter and informal income-generation strategies, and about the inadequacy of both public and market responses to the plight of the urban poor. But the report is also about hope, about building on the foundations of the urban poor’s survival strategies and about what needs to be done by both the public and non-governmental sectors.

As this report emphasizes, slums are a manifestation of the two main challenges facing human settlements viz., rapid urbanization and the urbanization of poverty. This report explores both the negative and positive aspects of slums.

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Many past responses to the problem of urban slums have been based on the erroneous belief that provision of improved housing and related services (through slum upgrading)…