a- What are the effects of slums? b- How can the formation of slums be prevented?

Question

a-     What are the effects of slums?

b-    How can the formation of slums be prevented?

Answer 1

This is a complicated question as slums can have mutlple origins. Specially what some of us may consider slums, others might not consider a certain topology as a slum.

Now slums (underserved public housing projects) in an American sense have multiple causes, These are a couple:.

1. Resident feel of non ownership.It is observable that people take care more of what is theirs or what they have gained through effort than what has been provided for them. This affects motivation and the sense of beloging. Many residents will not claim that it is their home. This leads to a lack of participation in communities that is worsened by the already lack of government participation and the feeling of non-ownership.
2. Segragation. Many of these housing projects did not consider the effects of segregation of communities and the negative effect it can have on quality of services provided, resources present in a community to allow proper maintainence and change. Changes in urban planning across multiple countries and state reflect this. Integrating different housing incomes in the same private housing development to allow for a desegragation of certain districts.

For private housing projects one of the main causes of slums is an economic downturn, normally enhanced by a certain industry leaving or in some cases natural disasters. Many government services are budgeted for certain income levels and population, if their is a quick downturn of tax revenue and of participants, Fire Department Efforts, Policing Efforts, Maintainence Efforts are sidelined for other government systems consequently leading to an underserved community. E.G. Flint, Michigan. Pharmaceutical Industry in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans (reduced population within a decade by over 25%)