Progressive thinking on slums or informal settlements must engage in two processes that underpin their formation and perpetuation: distorted urban land markets and the way the competition politics of globalization shape local land markets and urban policy. Can global governance offer a progressive approach to this challenge?

In the 2000 Millennium Declaration, UN Member States asserted that they "believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed." The United Nations further affirms its belief that globalization can be made fully inclusive and equitable, a position supported by international bestseller Hernando de Soto, who argues that "[e]veryone will benefit from globalizing capitalism within a country, but the most obvious and largest beneficiary will be the poor".1 This underpins his argument that the integration of the poor into the (globalizing) urban land market is the answer to poverty. However, in his book Mr. de Soto does not consider the sub-Saharan African reality of extreme distortion in the urban land market and the overwhelming demand for urban land from a class of better-off but under-housed households, who are ready to take advantage of the benefits of land programmes targeted at the poor. Whatever degree of globalization has reached this region, it has done little to correct the imbalance. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and targets were formulated, influenced by seemingly land market and globalization.

Photos courtesy of Marie Huchzermeyer

Most of the outcome-based MDG targets are to be achieved by 2015, by which time they aim to halve or substantially reduce the incidence of various indicators of underdevelopment-poverty, hunger, gender disparity, child and maternal mortality, the spread of HIV/AIDS and incidence of malaria, lack of access to water, sanitation and primary education. Only target 11 of MDG 7-ensure environmental sustainability-is to be achieved five years later and does not set out to halve or substantially reduce the slum population. It aims to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, as proposed in the "Cities Without Slums" initiative. This represents no more than 10 per cent of the world's population living in slums in 2000.

The "slum target" is considered to be achieved once 100 million slum dwellers have received relief in relation to any of the slum criteria, such as improved access to water and sanitation, improved structural quality of housing, reduced overcrowding and improved security of tenure.2 Given the worrying predictions of slum proliferation, UN-HABITAT has resolved to "fight on two fronts": improving the lives of 10 per cent of the existing slum population, while also creating alternatives to slum occupation for the newly urbanizing population,3 thus effectively preventing new slum formation. However, no measures are foreseen to ensure that these alternatives are not taken up by other, better-off but under-housed households.

The responsibility for achieving these targets lies with Governments; UN-HABITAT merely provides support through its two global campaigns-Good Governance and Security of Tenure-under which Cities Without Slums is the most successful and best resourced programme. Achieving MDG target 11 would hardly result in "cities without slums", but the programme was not intended directly for this target. From the start, this initiative promoted only the modest improvement of the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. The stated intention of the Cities Without Slums programme is to strengthen institutions and partnerships for slum-upgrading initiatives at the citywide level, with decision-making that is inclusive of the organizations of slum dwellers and supporting non-governmental organizations.

UN photo

Ideas within the United Nations are either normative, namely broad ideas about what the world should look like, or causal ideas that are more operational, often taking the form of a target.4 Cities Without Slums would appear to be a normative idea, while its causal element is framed as improving the lives of million slum dwellers by 2020. Given the exponential growth in slum formation, a contradiction is evident between these ideas. Target 11 is often confused with the normative target that cities should not have slums. We are all too familiar with the South African campaign to eradicate informal settlements, which since 2001 is officially associated with target 11. This is not only the case at the country level; even the UN-HABITAT Executive Director refers to MDG 7, target 11, of "Cities Without Slums".5

Target-setting in the United Nations has been successful in the field of health. Having the slum improvement target linked to the Cities Without Slums target suggests treating slums as if they were a disease, to be eradicated through global distribution of a universal remedy. This simple approach appeals to national and local decision makers. UN-HABITAT praises South Africa for having officially stated its commitment to the slum target. Leading Slum Dwellers International activist Jokin Arputhan, in the September 2005 Habitat Debate, warned that "the State talks about MDGs, then demolishes their homes". A recent review of the United Nations made a finding that is relevant to this observation: a "disconnect between knowledge creation and implementation within UN programmes does not receive sufficient international reaction".4

But is target-setting the correct global governance response to slums? I argue that the normative target of Cities Without Slums is problematic. While it is entirely unrealistic, given the predicted increase in slums, it is also undesirable in a world where increasing inequality appears to be an inevitable outcome of the unstoppable process of globalization in the context of a distorted land market. Preventing the formation of new slums merely means forcing poverty into other forms of inadequate housing, as yet not labelled slums. A more appropriate outcome than eradication of slums may be governance structures and approaches at the country and city levels that recognize and manage today's and future informal settlements. A shift would need to occur from Cities Without Slums to a campaign for "Cities Recognizing Slums". The accompanying programmes would not focus on government buy-in to the vision of a globally competitive city free of visible squalor. Instead, they would aim to achieve a fundamental shift in mindset, towards a more realistic understanding of informal settlements and their interaction with other low-income housing sub-markets, as well as towards the development of responses that improve people's lives while enabling new, informal settlements to form. This would alleviate the stress experienced by the growing under-housed population. Informal settlements may correct the imbalances in the urban market more effectively than programmes preventing their formation.

The South African Government is actively seeking to strengthen its position in global agenda-setting through two regional alliances: the South Africa-India-Brazil intergovernmental alliance and the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development, modelled on the Latin American equivalent. At various meetings and events of these new alliances, South Africa has promoted debt relief, as well as an increase in MDG 7, target 11. A further step would be for them to promote a global recognition of slums rather than unrealistic attempts at their eradication.

(This paper was presented at the Centre for Built Environment Studies [CUBES-University of the Witwatersrand] and South African Cities Network colloquium, "What is Progressive Urban Policy", Johannesburg, South Africa, 28 January 2006.)