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Forty percent of the population of Karachi, Pakistan live in slums and squatter
settlements.

In Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, the figure is 32%.

In Mexico City, it is over 50%.

In Cairo Egypt, more than 1 million people live in the city’s cemeteries, while many others sleep in mosques.

In Lima Peru around half the cities population live in inner city slums, and another quarter in squatter settlements.

Around half a million people live and sleep on the streets of Kolkata, India; some 3.5 million people (nearly 20% of the population) live in legal slums, or Bustees, and refugee settlements.

A recent survey of a typical two-story apartment in Delhi found 518 people (106 separatehouseholds) living in 49 rooms, or 1.5 m2 per person.

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URBANISATION:
the process by which the population of a country or nation state becomes increasingly located in urban areas through both population growth in urban centres and rural-urban migration.

OVER URBANISATION:
More urban resident than the economy of a city can support
URBAN DYNAMICS:
The body of theory which attempts to explain and describe the processes of change occurring in cities.

SPATIAL INTERDEPENDENCE:
The degree to which phenomena depend on each other for development and/or survival. Spatial interdependance implies that a spaitial association exisits.

SPATIAL EXCLUSION: Refers to the defence of luxury lifestyles which have resulted in restrictions in spatial access and the freedom of movement of other urban dwellers. It is manifest is high security suburbs, walled estates and security conscious retail-business complexes.

SLUM:
The word “slum” is often used to describe informal settlements within cities that have inadequate housing and squalid, miserable living conditions. They are often overcrowded, with many people crammed into very small living spaces, lack basic municipal services such as water, sanitation, waste collection, storm drainage, street lighting, paved sidewalks. Like all informal settlements, housing in slums is built on land that the occupant does not have a legal claim to and without any urban planning or adherence to zoning regulations.Today, more than one billion people in the world live in slums. In the developing world, one out of every three people living in cities lives in a slum. Other commons for slums include squatter settlements, favelas, kampong, ghetto, basti or shanti town.

SQUATTER RESETTLEMENT:
The process by which local authorities remove and relocated communites of slum dwellers to another part of the city in order to reclaim land and use it for another purpose.

FORMAL SECTOR:
The area of economic acitivity that is formally recorded by the state; that is, the area in which it can intervene directly or indirectly.

INFORMAL SECTOR:
Economic activities that ae not regulated by labout and taxation laws or monitored for inclusion by GDP estimates. It includes, for example, street vendors.

SANITATION:
Services and infrastucture put in place to ensure that habital spaces and their environments are abled to be cleaned and free from disease. They include running water, sewerage systems, toilets and waste disposal.

URBAN PLANNER: a person whose job it is to plan and strategise the development of urban places with respect to land uses, infrastructure and services with the aim of improving the quality of life for residents and facilitiating the social and economic development of the city.

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MEGA CITIES:
Very large agglomerations of at least 8 million inhabitants; the UN lists 22 mega cities of the developing world circa 2000: Mexico City, Lima, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Lagos, Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Karachi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangkok, Dhaka, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, Seoul, Metro Manilla, Jakarta.

WORLD CITY:
A large city that has outstripped its national urban network and become part of an international global system; centres of political power, world trade and communications, leaders in banking and finance, stage, world entertainment and sporting spectacles, the headquarters of NGOs and tourist meccas. They are command centres in the borderless domain of the new global economy.

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'Definitely anything would be better than doing nothing which has been the case so far' (AP)

A low-cost housing project in Boisar, a satellite town outside Mumbai, offers a taste of how hard it will be for Narendra Modi to fulfil a pledge to provide affordable homes for every Indian family if, as expected, his party wins India's election.

India needs about 19 million low-cost homes - roughly defined as costing a million rupees ($16,700) and below - to shelter an urban population expected to nearly double to 600 million by 2030 from 2011.

Consultants Monitor Deloitte estimated that the low cost housing segment represented a $150 billion business opportunity, but the challenge for developers lies in earning sufficient margin returns.

At Boisar, a modest industrial town 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Mumbai, Tata Housing is close to completing the construction of 1,200 cheap homes. But faced with disappointing profit margins the developer has been forced to raise prices, redefining the notion of what is "affordable".

"It is a tough model," said Brotin Banerjee, CEO of Tata Housing, which has invested up to 40 billion rupees ($666 million) in low-cost homes, with about 20,000 units built or under construction across the country.

Market prices for Tata's low-cost apartments in Boisar have more than doubled to 1.8 million rupees ($30,000) since off-plan sales began in 2009 when the developer sold most homes.

But, Tata has failed to generate margins of more than 20 percent it had sought and now expects to earn 15 to 16 percent, far below the margins of 30 to 50 percent that mid-tier and premium housing projects earn developers.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by prime ministerial front-runner Narendra Modi, promised in its election manifesto to adopt a low-cost housing policy that would ensure every family in Asia's third-largest economy has a home by 2022.

While details are scarce, it aims to make land more easily available to developers, and to provide them with incentives to build cheaper homes.

In India, housing is a state and not a federal subject, and it is unclear who will foot the bill in a country where government finances are stretched, and land prices are under almost constant upward pressure in overcrowded megacities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Tata Housing's Banerjee said costs rose and margins shrank in Boisar because project approvals were delayed, and the company had had to bring in basic infrastructure like roads, water and electricity - services it had expected the government to provide.

"I would be pleasantly surprised if this government or the new government were to really implement and execute things which they should be doing and which in their manifestos they profess to do. Definitely anything would be better than doing nothing which has been the case so far," said Banerjee.

For future projects Banerjee plans to build on land which has the basic infrastructure and to secure project approvals before selling any units off-plan - moves that will help protect margins but also make the homes dearer.

GUJARAT MODEL

Value & Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC), founded by former Citigroup Inc banker Jaithirth Rao and backed by private equity firm Carlyle Group, has also changed its definition of affordable housing to units of 3 million rupees and below from a range of 500,000 to 900,000 rupees in 2009, according to Vivin Mathew, CEO for India's western region.

"Unless the government gives a direct subsidy (to developers) it is very difficult, or unless you make a really small apartment, I do not see how else you can do it under a million rupees," he said.

This is putting low-cost homes out of reach for many price-sensitive buyers, said Madhusudhan Menon, chairman at Micro Housing Finance Corporation (MHFC), which mainly lends to people with an income of between 12,000 to 30,000 rupees a month.

In Gujarat state, where Modi is chief minister and which boasts the largest stock of affordable housing in India, a policy was introduced in January to encourgage developers to build cheap homes.

Still in its infancy, the policy invites developers to build low-cost homes on public land and subsidises part of the building cost. Developers can also build on their own land, where they are allowed to construct taller buildings.

Sanjay Shah, founder and CEO of DBS Communities, which builds low-cost homes in Gujarat, plans to construct 50,000 units by 2020 from 5,000 today.

When Shah started four years ago he capped the maximum price at a million rupees, but scarce land, a lengthy approval process and insufficient cheap capital has forced him to increase it to 1.5 million rupees.

He also failed to meet his margin expectation of 30 to 35 percent, and said that if costs keep rising and there is not enough government support it would soon be 1.75 million rupees.

"We want to have reasonable profits but we are not greedy." ($1 = 59.9950 Indian Rupees)

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Narendra Modi's party sells voters low-cost housing dream

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A low-cost housing project in Boisar, a satellite town outside Mumbai, offers a taste of how hard it will be for Narendra Modi to fulfil a pledge to provide affordable homes for every Indian family if, as expected, his party wins India's election

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*Dharavi slum was founded in 1880s during the British colonial era. The slum grew in part because of expulsion of factories and residents from peninsular city centre by colonial government, and from rural poor migrating into urban Mumbai (then called Bombay). It is currently a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, diverse settlement.

*“The plot on which the building is to be constructed is dotted with five structures, two of which are religious structures owned by trusts. We will start talks with the owners of the structures to get the plots cleared,” said an official requesting anonymity.

*The plan involves the construction of 2,800,000 square metres (30,000,000 sq ft) of housing, schools, parks and roads to serve the 57,000 families residing in the area, along with 3,700,000 square metres (40,000,000 sq ft) of residential and commercial space for sale.

*The construction of the first building, which will have a total of 18 floors, is now awaiting permission from the Ministry of Civil Aviation to construct the building to its proposed height.

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Gated communities, Sao Paulo