Slum

Slum in Delhi, India

A Slum is a part of a city or a town where many poor people live. It is a place where the people do not have many simple needs where the area is unclean and dirty. Some of these people may also have to bear social disadvantages. There are slums in most of the big cities of the world. They may not be called slum, however.

Literature

• Mike Davis:Planet of Slums London, New York 2006 ISBN 1-84467-022-8
• Elisabeth Blum / Peter Neitzke: FavelaMetropolis. Berichte und Projekte aus Rio de Janeiro und São Paulo, Birkhäuser Basel, Boston, Berlin 2004 ISBN 3-7643-7063-7

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was the great author of Victorian London. His account of the St Giles rookery was:

"Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper; every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three – fruit and ‘sweetstuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one – filth everywhere – a gutter before the houses, and a drain behind – clothes drying, and slops emptying from the windows; ... men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing".

Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839.

Other websites

• http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=131517
• South Africa slum dwellers' movement
• Slums of Victorian London
• Slums of New Delhi, India
• Every third person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN agency warns; John Vidal; The Guardian; October 4, 2003.
• Mute Magazine Vol 2#3, Naked Cities - Struggle in the Global Slums