Hello. In our video we will talk about one of the forms of urbanization, which is the shantytown. Shantytowns, which we will define briefly. But to preface it, we should note that, in principle, shantytowns are too complex to be defined by only one criterion. Because of this, normally we use a battery of criteria to define the shantytown, at times with the whole of criteria present, and at others, only the one, two, three, four, six criteria present. Shantytowns are also defined locally. What is considered a shantytown in one country or city, may not be in another country or city. So we cannot have certain global criteria which are applicable to the whole planet, but instead have particular, local situations. We must also keep in mind that the criteria can change with time. What one day is a shantytown may no longer be one a few years, or a few decades later. And, conversely, what was not one, based on changing norms, based on periods, can become a precarious zone. We'll use shantytown and precarious zone as two synonyms. We'll avoid, however, speaking of informal settlements, because, as we'll see, this housing has nothing spontaneous about it, It's a term one finds, generally, used when speaking of shantytowns in Africa, when speaking of informal settlements. So it become common usage even though, in fact, its meaning is essentially false within the African context. There is nothing spontaneous about, on the contrary, this slow settling of this form of housing. A few current statistics. In the world we have 923,986. We are of course, in thousands, of a total of 7 billion, which corresponds to 31.6%, the percentage in relation to urban population. So of the total urban population in 2000, which was 2,000 million, 861,000, we have 31%, or 923 million who live in shantytowns. If we look now at Africa, at all of the African nations, we'll end up at 187.562 million inhabitants, and this represents, globally, 61.3% of the urban population. The number is huge, and means that 6 out of 10 people living in cities, in Africa, live in shantytowns. For comparison, let's look at Asia, where 539.917 million of urban dwellers are living in shantytowns, which corresponds to 40.1%. There we have, we won't continue, we could see how the most developed regions and the less developed, share Africa in a certain number of sub-regions, we would have numbers which would be relatively different, if one is in a more developed country, or in a less developed country. What we must remember here is that, there is nonetheless a high proportion, a majority, more than 50%; one of every two people living in an African city lives in a shantytown. Of course this number is one which we'll try to reduce as much as we can at the same time that, as we've seen, urban population numbers continue to increase. Let's start with some definitions. The first we'll find in the document <i>UN-Habitat, The Challenge of Slums</i>. <i>UN-Habitat, The Challenge of Slums</i> We'll see if what they use as criteria for their evaluation, as criteria for their evaluation, when vetted against their diverse criteria of shantytowns, will allow us to determine if the zone we are studying can be considered a precarious zone, or, on the contrary, if it in no way meets the criteria, then it is not. Now one of the first points is, of course, the lack of basic services, the precarious habitat high population density, minimal living conditions, difficult conditions, land insecurity, poverty and social exclusion, and small-sized parcels. A certain number of criteria, we could add others. But we can already see that we are under conditions at the same time of spatial precariousness, which is the question of land, and at the same time with questions about habitat, about construction systems, also relatively precarious. Then we can look at the different zones and see whether or not they meet all criteria, or not. And we can imagine it must meet all criteria to be considered a shantytown. Otherwise we can well define, as long as we have three or four criteria, the zone to be a precarious one. Another group of experts from the U.N. uses other criteria, this from 2002. We'll see some examples. It's in English, the criteria are defined in English. But we have questions about sanitation, questions about access to water, questions about latrines and waste water, about quality of habitat, questions of overcrowding and, as we saw in the beginning, questions of security of land tenure. We define the major characteristics, then a certain number of indicators, and then we define in a more precise manner. We will not get into detail on this chart, but we should keep in mind that we are dealing with questions of access to water, waste water and infrastructure, questions of habitat quality, of overcrowding, Now, what causes the emergence of shantytowns? and, of course, of land issues. We can assign three basic categories: the first, second and third. The first is demographic, a natural growth, an increasingly large urban population. The next is economic, rural exodus, ever increasing, land speculation and, finally, the balancing of supply and demand. We must keep in the back of our minds that we are in the process of the pauperization of societies, that there are more and more people for an economic development which has yet to take place. This means that for each person there is impoverishment. And all the people who don't have access to the land market, as we are in a free land market, all of those who don't have access to the land market because it is too expensive, must find situations where they can live, and this often means a squat, or land occupied by those who do not own it, and it is the emergence of precarious and illegal zones. Finally, there are legal questions, with, as we've already said, the question of land tenure, and, finally, of private property. If you occupy land which you do not own, and which has a private owner, you are squatting, and you are not legally living on the land. To wrap up our quick journey through the shantytown, the most famous, without a doubt, in Africa, and the largest, in Kenya: Kibera, with its very recognizable rail line and its shantytown, which formed along its huge periphery. So, there are no official numbers, some claim it has 1 million inhabitants, others 500 thousand. What we must remember is that we are in a shantytown covered extensively by the media. But despite this, we haven't noticed any apparent change, difference, restructuring, or upgrading of the shantytown. We are still, more or less, in the same situation, and this despite the presence of dozens of NGO's, who for decades have worked in the very heart of the shantytown. A quick introduction to the shantytown. We'll now look at a specific case, the restructuring of a precarious zone, the Kebba of El Mina, in Nouakchott, a program over the last 10 years, the last 15 years, which is a rather symptomatic program because it began as urban sprawl, affecting thousands of people. And we'll see the basic plan of this type of program, divided between the restructuring, resettlement and, finally, the habitat program aid for the population.
