Hope for Slum Communities: Urban Planning
SECTION V: ENVIRONMENTAL HOPEby Scott Bessenecker
Excerpted from forthcoming The Quest for Hope in Slum Communities,
Reprinted with permission ISBN 1932805-192 World Vision Press in partnership with Authentic Media
expected publication date Summer 2005
Water and Sanitation
Population
Urban Planning
Our summer ministry team had invited Rebecca Atallah to visit with us at the monastery within the garbage community of Mokattam in Cairo, Egypt, where we lived and ministered. While the monastery grounds were actually quite nice (with a cafeteria, clean running water, toilets, and simply furnished rooms), the sights, smells, and sounds of the garbage community were everywhere. Rebecca had been serving the residents of this community since the late 1980s. On this particular night as she surveyed the village from the top of the great hill on which the monastery stood, she made a startling statement. “This place is like heaven!” she said with a smile. “Heaven?” I thought. “If this is heaven, I’m not sure I want to go there.”
We had lived in the garbage community of Mokkatam long enough for many of the things that shocked us at first to begin feeling normal. But the presence of animal waste and human trash coexisting with families who lived atop it all was something I never quite got used to. Young mothers would pick through a pile of raw, stinking trash while their babies ate from the same mound on which their mothers sorted. But Rebecca remembers the garbage community when it was rudimentary. She remembers the lean-tos and shanties where now there are brick buildings. She remembers the chaos and crime where now there is order and relative safety.
Mokattam is as much a community of families and businesses as any North American suburban community—more so in some ways. There are bread shops, bakeries, barber shops, restaurants, churches, and businesses lining the rubbish-strewn streets. The advantage that the residents of Mokattam have in relation to any suburban community in America is a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Many people there look out for one another in ways that would be unheard of in the bedroom communities of the rich. There is a kind of fellowship in suffering not available to the comfortable.
How is it that communities develop? Much of the development of Mokattam happened informally. Can the interplay of home, work, play, and services be arranged in a way to maximize life? Who determines where homes, shops, and bus lines are placed? Most slum communities develop without a master plan in mind; they spring up unpredictably and too fast for government officials to think about zoning or services. Even if they have zoned an area for business, many cities in the developing world lack the resources to stop informal settlements from emerging.
In his book Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America, Edward Goetz looks in some depth at the density of poor residents on the north side of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He observes that the urban poor are most often packed into a specific location and that this concentration brings with it a concentration of disadvantages. A concentration of poorly resourced public schools, a concentration of crime and drugs, and a concentration of unwed mothers often accompany these communities. Many efforts to serve the poor have also served to keep the poor crammed together. But attempts to “deconcentrate” these communities and merge them with higher-income neighborhoods bring their own set of challenges. Examining how the city of Minneapolis dealt with one neighborhood gives some clues as to how urban planning can serve cities with dense areas of poor residents.
“Beyond the Third World City: The New Urban Geography of South-east Asia,” by H.W. Dick and P.J. Rimmer, Urban Studies 35, 1998 (only available for purchase; see the abstract here) examines how wealthy developers, American city models, and the minority middle-class have often driven the structure of Asian cities in the developing world. It is a relevant survey of the past two hundred years of urban planning in South-east Asia.
Where are the urban developers who have a heart for the poor and know how to involve them in the decisions that impact their neighborhoods?
Water and Sanitation
Population
Urban Planning
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