What is a slum?

A squalid and an overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by the much poor people of the society or a country is called a slum.

There are no carpeted roads or proper sewerage systems for the people living there, and they, on their own, have made some sewerages and put some pipelines for the sake of avoiding pollution in their areas.

Here we will be discussing the top 5 slums of all over the world where people live with  difficulty and spending their lives in poverty

5th largest in Khayelitsha

This slum is situated in Cape Town South Africa 

Population

The slum is populated with more than 400,000 people, with more than 99% of black people.

Last time the census was done there in 2011, but the activist believes that the population is three times bigger, and according to a 2012 inquiry report over that township, more than 12,000 people don't have access to the toilets. 

Toilets

Many have to share inadequate toilets with others and have to walk without light for a very long distance for the sake of getting toilets, and many use temporary porta-potties and chemical toilets. 

4th largest in Kibera

This slum is situated in Nairobi in Kenya

Population

Although Kenya is famous for its tea leaves, there's also much poverty in this country and over 700,000 people live in slums and make it the 4th largest slum of the world

It is also the largest slum of Africa and a home for more than 400,000 children who go to informal schools set up by the local people and the churches to seek education, and this slum is located 5km from Nairobi city center.

Local people efforts

The residents strike for not building the roads through Kibera and bulldozing the schools and locally made thousands of clinics and they gone through the local courts for getting their rights 

3rd largest in Dharavi

This slum is situated in the famous city of India, Mumbai 

Population

Besides the richest people of India living in Delhi and Mumbai, there exists a slum in Mumbai with over 10,00,000 population, and Slumdog Millionaire was filmed here thriving thousands of small businesses.

Budget

Slum currently is having an informal economy of over $1 Billion annual turnover 

Sanjeev Sanyal, an economist, and writer said, "people think of slums as places of static despair and depicted in films such as Slumdog Millionaire."

2nd largest is Ciudad Neza

The slum is located in Mexico City, Mexico 

Population

This is the east side of Mexico and the slum is home for more than 1200,000 people and has become more like a suburb 

They thank the residents for making the slum worth living on their own efforts to build a community and to deliver the public service.

Moreover, people can get local jobs there, and the slum is the model of development for other slums 

Jose Castillo was an urban planner, and an architect in Mexico City told Thomson Reuters Foundation that there is a strong sense of pride in that place and a community is based on a notion that the people jointly transformed their territory and living

1st largest is Orange

This slum is the ls the largest slum of the world and is situated in Asia

Population

Orange is in the area of Orangi Town in the city of Karachi, Pakistan, and being the home town for more than 2400,000 people; even the exact figure is still not known, makes it the largest slum of the world.

Damage

As most of the poor people live in Orangi, the coronavirus disease affected them very badly because most of the businesses, even of the lower level, were closed and finished.

Fed up with living without proper sanitation and waiting for the government to sanitize their area, the people of Orangi installed sewers and built them by hands themselves and now over more than 90% of the slum with almost 8,000 streets have been properly sanitized by the local people, and they are living without the government aid

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/these-are-the-worlds-five-biggest-slums/