“The federation model of community organizing” – Sheela Patel, Slum Dwellers International – UN-Habitat
In the past two decades through a process called “Enumeration” through which the members collect at city level data about slums, Slum Dwellers International have created a mechanism which serves to create a city wide network of urban informal settlements with the intention of the dwellers to see themselves as part of a larger subsection of the city, whose needs have been neglected and whose voice has to reach the city and the national government.
How can we transcend slum urbanism in Africa? – Edgar Pieterse, University of Cape Town – UN-Habitat
In this lecture, Edgar Pieterse, professor at the University of Cape Town and the founding director of the African Centre for Cities, puts forward the concept of the underlying logic of slum urbanism. This logic in turn manifests in an overall urban form that can be characterised as ‘extreme splintered urbanism’—a pattern of urban development that manifests in sharp urban divides, the privatisation of key urban services and infrastructure linked to large-scale slum neglect over long periods of time.