Written evidence submitted by Professor
Alan Gilbert
1. I am writing on an individual basis as
a university researcher (Professor at University College London)
and consultant who has worked for more than forty years on many
issues related to urbanisation and poverty in Latin America and
other poor countries. In the process I have carried out research
in low-income settlements in numerous poor cities (financed by
DFID, ESRC, IDRC, Leverhulme Trust and United Nations University
among others) and advised various UN bodies (most regularly UN-Habitat),
the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.
2. I welcome the Parliamentary Committee's
interest in the issue of urbanisation and poverty, something that
has received all too little interest over the years from UK governments
or from academia in this country. I hope that more may be done
to help poor people in the cities of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
However, I am concerned that too many recent statements about
urban poverty have tended to ignore much of the accumulated knowledge
that we have gathered about how people live in poorer cities.
Too many recent statements are likely to over-generalise about
living conditions, to use inappropriate and often pejorative language,
and to seek panacea when it is quite clear that any solutions
must be piecemeal and locally generated. I fear that the second
paragraph of your statement of intent, despite its good intentions,
runs the same danger.
3. My statement is based on the research
and consultancy that I have conducted over 40 years. I have published
10 books, edited four others and written over 150 refereed
articles on issues related to urbanisation and poverty. I will
refer to a handful of these items in this submission. I wish to
address the misuse of the term slum, the issues of property rights
and tenure, the need for better urban governance, the implications
of the financial downturn and trends in urban crime and violence.
Above all else I wish to remind the Committee that the cities
of Africa, Asia and Latin America are very diverse and, despite
the obvious temptations, little value is likely to be gained from
making grand generalisations about poverty and urbanisation. While
there are common problems the diversity of conditions in Addis
Ababa, Mumbai and La Paz suggests that local approaches have to
take precedence over international conventional wisdom.
4. Use of the term "slum":
In a recent paper[93]
I have denounced the way that the term slum has re-entered the
habitat vocabulary after many years of being banished from most
expert's lexicons. Use of the word "slum" runs the danger
of recreating many of the myths about poor people that years of
careful research have discredited. The UN has employed the word
in order to publicize the seriousness of urban problems and to
improve its ability to attract funding with which to tackle the
issue. But in using such an emotive word the UN risks opening
a Pandora's box. The "Cities without Slums" campaign
implies that cities can actually rid themselves of slums, an idea
that is wholly unachievable. The word is also dangerous because
it confuses the physical problem of poor quality housing with
the characteristics of the people living there. The UN knows that
earlier research has rehabilitated most "slum dwellers"
but ignores the danger of conjuring up all of the old images.
In the process, the campaign also offers an oblique invitation
to governments to look for instant solutions to insoluble problems.
Demagogic governments have always shown a willingness to demolish
slums despite the fact that experience has shown that policy to
be ineffective. I fear that the new campaign will encourage more
to employ this foolish policy. Words need to be employed carefully
and I would urge the Committee to avoid using this long-discredited,
but currently fashionable, word.
5. The need for better urban governance:
It is absolutely clear that too many poor people live in cities
that are badly managed and where governments do too little to
provide them with essential infrastructure and services. Nevertheless,
there are instances of good urban governance in poorer countries
which would repay greater attention. Two Colombian cities (Bogotá
and Medellín), two Brazilian cities (Curitiba and Porto
Alegre) and Santiago in Chile demonstrate that it is possible
to transform urban management and to improve people's lives in
the process. Too little is known about these cities and the lessons
that they possibly offer to less well-governed places. How to
turn a badly governed city round is not an easy task but the example
of Bogotá, with its recent spectacular fall in criminality,
its splendid new public bus system, its health and food campaigns,
and its increasingly transparent and honest forms of government,
is well worth studying.[94]
It is to be noted that while Bogotá has benefited from
decentralisation, a currently fashionable international development
policy, most Colombian cities have not been up to the task of
running their own affairs—a further message that panacea
of any kind should be avoided.
6. Property rights: Recent international
development policy has been too anxious to insist that the key
problem facing low-income people is the lack of property rights.
Policies concerning the issuing of title deeds, upgrading shantytowns
and increasing the availability of micro-finance for low-income
housing have all been linked to the topic of property rights.
While none of these are wholly misguided policies, they tend to
miss the key issues that stop poor people improving their shelter.
While some governments have been rightly condemned because they
have evicted poor people from "illegal" areas, anti-eviction
campaigns miss the point that there would not be so many "slums"
in Africa, Asia and Latin America if most governments had been
actively evicting the poor. The truth is that over the years most
governments have actually encouraged irregular urban development
and more recently have introduced policies to upgrade those settlements.
While upgrading policies are to be welcome, there is a missing
ingredient in most governments' policies: almost no government
in Africa, Asia or Latin America has planned for the future expansion
of informal settlement. The rediscovery of some kind of sites-and-services
policy is badly needed.
7. The populist message of the eminent publicist
Hernando de Soto[95]
is that issuing title deeds to the poor will transform their lives.
It is a recommendation popular with many governments because it
is an extremely cheap way of apparently helping large numbers
of people. However, my research suggests that his arguments misunderstand
reality in informal settlements and that their popularity with
governments is based on populism rather than evidence.
8. Tenure: up to one billion people
across the globe live in rental accommodation or share shelter
with members of their family. Despite this huge number, tenants
and their landlords are largely invisible to most government policy
makers. Over the last twenty years or so, virtually every government
in the world has adopted housing policies that have privileged
home-ownership. They have been oblivious of the dangers that this
involves for both cities and the national economy (eg sub-prime
mortgage lending and urban sprawl). This policy bias has distorted
the shape of our cities, our vision of how we should live and
arguably even social harmony. Encouraging home-ownership is perfectly
reasonable, providing that it does not harm those who do not wish
to or who cannot own. But all too often it does precisely that.
I have done work over the years for UN-Habitat in recommending
a more tenure-neutral policy.[96]
I would suggest that home ownership is not a requisite for a high
quality of urban life. After all, Zurich and Geneva, two cities
regularly garlanded as the world's most liveable urban areas,
have achieved this lofty status with very low levels of home-ownership.
If Zurich and Geneva, with more than three-quarters of their inhabitants
renting accommodation, can offer such an excellent quality of
life and in the process avoid a sub-prime crisis, surely that
experience suggests that rental tenure offers just a few advantages?
9. The implications of current global
financial downturn for urbanisation in developing countries:
globalisation and recent increases in trade have helped many poorer
countries reduce poverty. Unfortunately, those countries and cities
which did best during the boom will fare worst in the extended
recession. The really poor cities in Africa and parts of Asia
and Latin America benefited little from the boom and will be less
affected by the current recession. However, there is a real danger
that aid flows will be reduced further and foreign investment
in key infrastructure projects will slow. Even more dangerous
is the reduction in remittances, a form of outside assistance
that genuinely reaches the poor. Another danger is that where
exports were generated in rural areas, recent falls in commodity
prices will encourage more farmers and their families towards
the cities. The key point, however, is that it is dangerous to
generalise across poor countries in terms of the impact of the
current downturn on poor people. For example, some cities are
much more dependent on remittances than others.
10. Crime and violence: Concern is
currently being expressed that the economic downturn will help
to fuel urban violence. Growing poverty and inequality is expected
to raise crime levels. Since crime levels in cities like Caracas,
Johannesburg and Managua are already appallingly high, this is
a genuine concern. Fortunately, there is little evidence to support
that fear. Over the past decade, Bogotá and Medellín,
for example, managed to cut homicide rates both during periods
of economic decline and times of economic growth. In the vast
majority of cases where urban violence has risen it has been linked
to the drug trade. The most violent cities in Latin America and
indeed in Southern Africa all have major drug problems, partly
due to local consumption but mainly over the struggle to control
drug traffic. The recent experiences in northern Mexico exemplify
the problem. In my opinion, the UK government could most realistically
contribute to a reduction in urban crime levels internationally
by adopting a more realistic drug policy at home.
93 Gilbert, Alan, Water for All: How To Combine
Public Management with Commercial Practice for the Benefit of
the Poor?, Urban Studies, Vol 44, No 8, 1559-1579, July 2007. Back
94
Gilbert/Alan, Good Urban Governance: Evidence from a Model
City?, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol 25, No 3,
pp 392-419, 2006; Gilbert/Alan, The Return of the Slum: Does
Language Matter?, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, Volume 31.4 December 2007 pp. 697-713; and
Gilbert/Alan, Bus Rapid Transit: Is Transmilenio a Miracle
Cure?, Transport Reviews, Vol. 28, No. 4, 439-467, July 2008. Back
95
Gilbert/Alan, On the mystery of capital and the myths of Hernando
de Soto: What difference does legal title make?, IDPR, 24 (1)
2002. Back
96
Gilbert/Alan, Viewpoint. Slums, tenants and home-ownership:
on blindness to the obvious, IDPR, 30 (2) 2008. Back
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