ABSTRACT
The scale of the need for urban services and housing in the coming decades is both huge and unprecedented. Starting from a position characterized by backlogs, developing countries will add about 2 billion new urban residents during the next 20 years, all of whom will need services and shelter in some form. They will be concentrated in 48 countries, mostly in South, Southeast and East Asia, with 660 million in China and India. In most countries, in the absence of some major global change, there will be continuing and deepening urbanization of poverty. As stated in Chapter 1, the current backlog of people living in slums is approximately 925 million. They will probably be joined by a further 1900 million (more than twice as many again), resulting in 2.8 billion slum dwellers by 2030.
