Guidelines for the Revision of Regulations for Urban Upgrading

This paper draws heavily on the experience in settlement upgrading of Federations of the Urban Poor in Asia and Africa with whom Homeless International has worked for the last fifteen years. The Federation process has been documented in detail elsewhere and is ongoing in a range of countries including Cambodia, India, Thailand, the Philippines, South Africa, Swaziland, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya and Uganda. In addition “sister” organisations exist in Pakistan, Laos, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The starting point for most Federations is community mobilisation around money, in the form of savings and loans, and information, in the form of settlement enumerations, profiling and mapping. Other Federation rituals include life size house and sanitation modelling and the co-ordination of exhibitions and festivals at which models and prototypes designed at community level can be inspected and tested by the urban poor themselvesmand by public officials. Interchange within and between Federations is ongoing, through a process of community exchanges which frequently involve officials and professionals as well as Federation members.

The settlements where Federation members live vary considerably. Members live on dumpsites, pavements, and in squatter, slum and back shack areas. The Indian Federation is the oldest, formed in 1974. Others have emerged far more recently in the 1990’s. They are organisationally linked through Shack/Slum Dwellers International, their own network of national Federations.

The key tools or “rituals” which are common across the Federations are summarised in the box below: • The formation of saving and credit groups creates a basis for collecting money, people and information resulting in collective capital and basic organisational capacity. • Enumerations and settlement mapping, carried out by the urban poor themselves, enables the collection of settlement-based information, particularly relating to housing, land and infrastructure, which is owned by the poor rather than by outsiders. • Housing and toilet exhibitions and festivals demonstrate the possible in a manner that enables fundamental choices to be made about allocation of collective assets – particularly land and infrastructure – provided through local or national state agencies. Exhibitions also create a space for policy makers, politicians and the urban poor to explore alternative options for investment and new options for planning and building standards. Thirdly, life-sized models act as a mobilising tool in communities, enabling people to get a feel for the space created and to enhance communities’ aspirations about what is possible. • Learning and mutual support are nurtured through a process of exchanges – visits to each other’s communities so that experiences can be shared. Increasingly such exchanges also include public officials and other professionals, encouraging their exposure to the way in which organisations of the urban poor perceive, analyse and respond to the issues that they prioritise within their local contexts. • The implementation of small pilot projects which demonstrate how a community driven process can design and implement solutions that make sense to them, and which act as precedents for larger scale development.

The paper examines community-led initiatives and, more specifically, some of the experiences that the Federations and their support NGOs have gone through as they have initiated and led settlement upgrading initiatives. Many of these initiatives have been designed not just to provide better living conditions for those directly involved but also to challenge the way in which upgrading is conceived and carried out within local, national and international regulatory frameworks.

Some have been spontaneous developments in response to particular emergencies, others have been carefully chosen and planned in line with the priorities of local organisations of the urban poor. In many cases, as a result of Federation precedent setting, changes to policy and practice have been achieved that have affected many thousands of families. Daily savings lie at the core of organisational development amongst Federations of the urban poor.

The paper begins with an overview of the conceptual framework of development that has guided our thinking before identifying the key challenges that have been tackled within the slum upgrading experiences considered. Examples from a range of organisations and countries are described with particular respect to their role in establishing new precedents for regulatory practice. Finally a number of conclusions are drawn with recommendations, where appropriate, for future action.