ABSTRACT
At the time of writing, it was over 20 years since the publication of Charles Abrams’ Housing in the Modern World (Abrams, 1966). Since then the literature on ‘squatter settlements’ has grown at a rate comparable with the expansion of cities in the Third World themselves. John F.C. Turner’s writings (Turner, 1976) in the 1970s did much to challenge conventional views of the urban ‘slums’, and while many detailed reports have been made on bustees, favelas, gecekondus, bidonvilles and many other types of illegal settlement, positive approaches to ‘sites and services’ schemes, settlement upgrading and other improvement measures have developed. A variety of building types, environmental conditions, material resources and skills have been noted in them, but in general, illegal housing is built at minimum cost from found and waste materials. They are, for the most part, makeshift constructions, with one or two rooms, single-storeyed and unserviced. Flattened oil drums, kerosene cans, vehicle tyres, sacking and plastic sheeting are widely used, but the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the builders and their capacity to recycle materials testify to the desire on the part of the squatter to have a stake in the city. Settlement upgrading projects have done much to improve roads, to bring services of water, sewage disposal and electricity to the settlements, though the improved locations have often attracted still more migrants as a result. In some cases, there has been little consultation or participation with the settlers themselves in such projects as, for instance, the Kampung Improvement Projects in Jakarta (Silas, 1984). There is, therefore, a hint of paternalism in the bringing of the services, but this nevertheless, is a vastly more constructive approach than was
official response to the ‘problem’ (Payne, 1984). A number of writers, including the critics of John Turner’s advo-
cacy (Burgess, 1982), have blamed the development of squatter settlements on the adoption by less developed and less prosperous countries, of the western capitalist system. While the issues are complex there is much to support the argument; however, little is known or written about concerning urban problems in socialist and ‘Second World’ countries. Analyses of urbanization in the former USSR, in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or the German Democratic Republic has revealed undoubted problems, but population projections and urban growth has often been accurate and contained (Musil, 1980). Nevertheless, in a centrally planned economy, controls on movement of labour and regional development involved losses in personal freedom which many would find unacceptable (Bourne et al., 1984). Whether the living conditions of those who migrate to Third World cities are any more acceptable is a point that might be argued at length, but in another paper.
