Water at informal settlements, where sanitation and waste management facilities were absent, had high bacteria levels.
Profit margins in South Africa’s minibus taxi industry have been under pressure long before the COVID-19 lockdown.
Karel Prinsloo / AFP via GettyImages
The role of government should be to improve and reorganise this sector to address the needs of users. The proposed national operational subsidy is an opportunity to do precisely that.
A car that was washed away floats close to the banks of the Jukskei River in Alexandra Township after floodwaters ravaged the area on November 10, 2016.
Gulshan Khan/AFP via Getty Images
The demon is not density but rather that African countries have not planned and made the investments necessary to manage the downsides of the type of density found in informal settlements.
Artwork of men wearing facemasks seen on the street walls in Mathare slums to create awareness of stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Besides battling the coronavirus pandemic, San Roque residents have long been locked in a bigger struggle for their very survival as a community in the face of home demolitions and relocations.
Long before the Indian government responded to the threat of COVID-19 with a lockdown, residents of Shivaji Nagar, with the support of a local NGO, were protecting and helping one another.
A market area in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, crowded with people despite the coronavirus pandemic, May 12, 2020.
hmed Salahuddin/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Robert Muggah, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) e Richard Florida, University of Toronto
COVID-19 is spreading fast through not only the world’s richest cities but also its poorest, ravaging slum areas where risk factors like overcrowding and poverty accelerate disease transmission.
Many are speculating about the pandemic changing how we plan and use our cities. What they overlook is how many people live in unplanned settlements where it’s more likely to be business as usual.
Police trying to enforce COVID-19 lockdown regulations outside a shop in Yeoville, Johannesburg.
Marco Longari/GettyImages
There are huge holes in the governance of Nairobi river and city’s waste which means the river’s condition has deteriorated.
The Bangladesh government wants Karail, an established community of 200,000 people in the capital Dhaka, to make way for development.
Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World/flickr
A community of 200,000 in Dhaka faces eviction to make room for “development”. Is it time to rethink the concept, especially with a billion people now living in informal settlements worldwide?
Durban’s Bhambayi township was among the areas wrecked by heavy rains, mudslides and winds that have left more than 300 people dead.
RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP via Getty Images
Rebuilding informal settlements after a disaster must be done through learning from those who live in the settlements.
Residents of slums like Kamla Nehru Nagar, a kilometre away from Patna Junction, have yet to share in the promised benefits of smart cities.
Sujeet Kumar
Indians were promised they would be included in planning 100 smart cities and that everyone would benefit. But many of the millions of slum residents have had no say in their homes being destroyed.
New toilet blocks in Mathare Valley informal settlement in Nairobi.
Samantha Winter
The rental housing market in Nairobi’s informal settlements offers its tenant households a perverse market outcome of higher prices for lower quality products
In South Africa, untamed fires are on the rise in informal settlements and low-income neighbourhoods.
Alpheus Mashigo/fireservices.gov.za