WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.639 I want you to close your eyes for a second, unless 00:00:01.639 --> 00:00:05.160 you're driving, obviously, and just try to visualize 00:00:05.160 --> 00:00:08.220 a number. One billion. It's one of those numbers 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:10.439 that's so big it almost stops meaning anything. 00:00:10.699 --> 00:00:13.320 It just turns into static. It does. It becomes 00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:15.759 completely abstract, just data. Yeah. But we 00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:17.980 really have to try to tune into that static today. 00:00:18.579 --> 00:00:22.929 One billion human beings. As of... What, 2006? 00:00:23.350 --> 00:00:25.170 That was the number of people on this planet 00:00:25.170 --> 00:00:27.589 living in slums? And I was looking at the projections 00:00:27.589 --> 00:00:29.710 in the deep dive stack you sent over. Yeah, they're 00:00:29.710 --> 00:00:32.450 not great. Not great is an understatement. If 00:00:32.450 --> 00:00:34.869 we just keep going business as usual, if we don't 00:00:34.869 --> 00:00:36.810 change the formula, that number isn't shrinking, 00:00:36.990 --> 00:00:39.780 it's doubling. Doubling. Two billion people by 00:00:39.780 --> 00:00:41.960 2030. And that is the cliff edge we are walking 00:00:41.960 --> 00:00:43.960 toward. I mean, to put that two billion in perspective, 00:00:44.179 --> 00:00:47.079 because like you said, big numbers just numb 00:00:47.079 --> 00:00:50.219 us. We're talking about a future, a very near 00:00:50.219 --> 00:00:54.020 future, where one out of every four human beings 00:00:54.020 --> 00:00:56.560 on Earth is living in an informal settlement. 00:00:56.759 --> 00:01:00.179 One in four. That just stops being a marginal 00:01:00.179 --> 00:01:02.619 issue. Oh, absolutely. It becomes the main story 00:01:02.619 --> 00:01:05.599 of humanity. Precisely. And I think the reason 00:01:05.599 --> 00:01:08.060 this deep dive is so necessary right now is that 00:01:08.060 --> 00:01:10.939 most of us, especially here in the West, we have 00:01:10.939 --> 00:01:14.540 this massive cognitive dissonance about it. I 00:01:14.540 --> 00:01:16.859 mean, when I say the word slum, be honest. What's 00:01:16.859 --> 00:01:18.799 the first image that pops into your head? Honestly. 00:01:18.959 --> 00:01:21.799 Yeah. I picture the aftermath of a disaster, 00:01:21.959 --> 00:01:24.689 you know, like a hurricane. Or maybe a refugee 00:01:24.689 --> 00:01:27.409 camp. Yeah. Something temporary. Temporary. Yeah. 00:01:27.469 --> 00:01:29.829 A glitch in the matrix. A chaotic mess that just 00:01:29.829 --> 00:01:32.230 happened and will, you know, get cleaned up in 00:01:32.230 --> 00:01:34.870 a year or two. A glitch. Exactly. That is the 00:01:34.870 --> 00:01:37.250 standard narrative. A temporary anomaly. Oh. 00:01:37.430 --> 00:01:40.150 But the mission of this deep dive today is to 00:01:40.150 --> 00:01:43.579 completely invert that thinking. Okay. The research, 00:01:43.780 --> 00:01:46.659 all of it is screaming at us that slums aren't 00:01:46.659 --> 00:01:50.060 accidents. They aren't temporary. They are established. 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:52.519 They are complex. And in many ways, they are 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:54.959 permanent features of how the human species build 00:01:54.959 --> 00:01:57.480 cities. That's that city within a city concept 00:01:57.480 --> 00:01:59.439 I saw on the note. It is. I mean, look, we are 00:01:59.439 --> 00:02:01.920 witnessing the urbanization of the human species. 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:04.060 That is the headline story of the 21st century. 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:06.859 Right. And for a massive chunk of the population, 00:02:07.079 --> 00:02:11.300 a growing chunk, the slum isn't a glitch. It 00:02:11.300 --> 00:02:14.500 is the vehicle. for that urbanization. It is 00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:16.120 the waiting room, the bedroom, and the factory 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:19.659 floor for a quarter of the world. So if this 00:02:19.659 --> 00:02:22.060 is the vehicle, we need to understand how the 00:02:22.060 --> 00:02:24.479 engine works. But before we get into the economics 00:02:24.479 --> 00:02:27.099 and the tragedy of it all, I want to pause on 00:02:27.099 --> 00:02:31.219 the word itself, slum. It feels heavy. It feels 00:02:31.219 --> 00:02:34.759 judgmental. When we use it, are we already biasing 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:37.060 the conversation? We are. And I think that's 00:02:37.060 --> 00:02:38.919 unavoidable, but really important to acknowledge. 00:02:39.099 --> 00:02:42.000 The word is incredibly loaded and it's actually 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:44.360 a relic. It's thought to be old British slang 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:46.500 popping up in London's East End around, what, 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:48.840 1845? I saw that note. It originally just meant 00:02:48.840 --> 00:02:50.960 room, right? Something that simple. Roughly, 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:53.219 yes. It seems to have evolved from meaning a 00:02:53.219 --> 00:02:56.000 room to a back slum, which was, you know, basically 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.139 a back alley. So it was a spatial description. 00:02:58.340 --> 00:03:00.219 Just a spatial description, that back alley over 00:03:00.219 --> 00:03:03.080 there. But very, very quickly. It morphed from 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:05.580 describing the place to judging the people in 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:08.639 the place. It became a synonym for moral decay, 00:03:08.879 --> 00:03:11.909 for crime, for filth. Which is a pattern we see 00:03:11.909 --> 00:03:14.129 a lot in language, isn't it? You label the geography 00:03:14.129 --> 00:03:16.750 first, then you stigmatize the population. And 00:03:16.750 --> 00:03:18.870 that stigma is dangerous because if you label 00:03:18.870 --> 00:03:21.870 an area a slum, it's often a prelude to clearing 00:03:21.870 --> 00:03:24.270 it. Right. It delegitimizes the fact that people 00:03:24.270 --> 00:03:25.969 have built lives there. It makes it sound like 00:03:25.969 --> 00:03:28.689 trash to be swept away. But for us to have this 00:03:28.689 --> 00:03:31.669 conversation today, we can't just rely on vibes 00:03:31.669 --> 00:03:34.750 or, you know, insults. We need a hard definition. 00:03:35.979 --> 00:03:37.979 The United Nations actually has a checklist for 00:03:37.979 --> 00:03:40.879 this. I have the checklist here. And it's fascinating 00:03:40.879 --> 00:03:44.500 because it's not just about, are you poor? It's 00:03:44.500 --> 00:03:47.879 very structural, very specific. The UN says a 00:03:47.879 --> 00:03:51.000 household is a slum if it fails on just one of 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:54.060 five conditions. Just one. That's the key. And 00:03:54.060 --> 00:03:56.259 these five conditions, they really are the blueprint 00:03:56.259 --> 00:03:58.060 of the struggle. Why don't you walk us through 00:03:58.060 --> 00:03:59.939 them? Because each one represents a specific 00:03:59.939 --> 00:04:03.759 failure of planning. OK, so number one. Access 00:04:03.759 --> 00:04:06.439 to improved water. Which means water that is 00:04:06.439 --> 00:04:09.180 safe, affordable, and actually accessible without, 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:11.740 you know, walking three miles or queuing for 00:04:11.740 --> 00:04:13.680 four hours every morning. Right. Number two, 00:04:13.900 --> 00:04:18.699 access to improved sanitation. So, toilets, sewage, 00:04:18.759 --> 00:04:22.019 the basic hygiene infrastructure that stops a 00:04:22.019 --> 00:04:24.439 city from becoming a massive disease vector. 00:04:24.660 --> 00:04:27.339 Number three is overcrowding, so not having sufficient 00:04:27.339 --> 00:04:30.829 living area. And this one is brutal. If you have 00:04:30.829 --> 00:04:33.050 five people sleeping in a room that was designed 00:04:33.050 --> 00:04:35.949 for one, you are technically in a slum condition, 00:04:36.170 --> 00:04:38.329 regardless of how nice the building is on the 00:04:38.329 --> 00:04:40.730 outside. It's about the density and the stress 00:04:40.730 --> 00:04:43.310 that puts on a human being. Yeah. Okay, number 00:04:43.310 --> 00:04:46.709 four, housing durability. You know, is the roof 00:04:46.709 --> 00:04:48.769 going to fly off in a storm? Is the wall made 00:04:48.769 --> 00:04:51.269 of cardboard? Basic structural integrity. And 00:04:51.269 --> 00:04:53.589 number five, this is the one that really stood 00:04:53.589 --> 00:04:57.370 out to me, security of tenure. Ah, that is the 00:04:57.370 --> 00:04:59.629 invisible one. It's the right to stay, basically. 00:04:59.730 --> 00:05:01.389 Is that what it means? It's the protection against 00:05:01.389 --> 00:05:03.430 forced eviction. I mean, just imagine living 00:05:03.430 --> 00:05:06.370 in a house where, you know, deep down that at 00:05:06.370 --> 00:05:08.209 any moment a bulldozer could show up and you 00:05:08.209 --> 00:05:11.269 would have zero legal recourse. None. That psychological 00:05:11.269 --> 00:05:13.769 weight, that is a defining feature of a slum. 00:05:14.149 --> 00:05:16.170 If you don't have the legal right to exist there, 00:05:16.230 --> 00:05:18.629 why would you ever invest in fixing the roof? 00:05:18.790 --> 00:05:20.629 Why would you build a better toilet? Because 00:05:20.629 --> 00:05:23.259 it could all be gone tomorrow. It creates this 00:05:23.259 --> 00:05:26.519 trap of short -termism. You're forced to live 00:05:26.519 --> 00:05:29.459 day to day. That's the tragedy. The insecurity 00:05:29.459 --> 00:05:33.120 breeds the physical decay. And while slum is 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:35.399 the English label we're using, I love looking 00:05:35.399 --> 00:05:37.639 at the global vocabulary for this because it 00:05:37.639 --> 00:05:40.120 just proves how universal the experience is. 00:05:40.199 --> 00:05:42.240 Right. The words themselves tell the story of 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:44.680 how these places are built. Oh, the list of names 00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:48.040 is poetic. In a really dark way. You have the 00:05:48.040 --> 00:05:51.379 favela in Brazil, of course, the barrio in Venezuela. 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:53.959 In Turkey, they call it Gizikandu. And this is 00:05:53.959 --> 00:05:56.240 one of my favorites for what it reveals about 00:05:56.240 --> 00:05:58.860 the legal loopholes. What does that mean? It 00:05:58.860 --> 00:06:01.420 literally translates to built overnight. That 00:06:01.420 --> 00:06:04.160 is such a vivid image. It captures the speed 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:06.500 of it, but also the, you know, the stealth. It 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:08.959 captures the desperation and the loophole in 00:06:08.959 --> 00:06:11.290 Ottoman law and later in... Turkish tradition, 00:06:11.410 --> 00:06:14.050 if you could build a structure between sunset 00:06:14.050 --> 00:06:16.649 and sunrise and get a roof on it. A roof on it 00:06:16.649 --> 00:06:18.850 by morning. The authorities couldn't just tear 00:06:18.850 --> 00:06:20.649 it down immediately. They needed a court order. 00:06:20.769 --> 00:06:23.449 So entire neighborhoods were literally second 00:06:23.449 --> 00:06:26.410 due built overnight by communities racing to 00:06:26.410 --> 00:06:29.129 beat the sun. That is incredible human ingenuity. 00:06:29.209 --> 00:06:31.250 It's like hacking the legal code with carpentry. 00:06:31.350 --> 00:06:35.009 It is. And then in France and Francophone Africa, 00:06:35.170 --> 00:06:38.709 you have the bidon bill. bidon means a tin can 00:06:38.709 --> 00:06:42.470 or a metal drum so tin can town a town of tin 00:06:42.470 --> 00:06:44.709 cans it tells you exactly what the architecture 00:06:44.709 --> 00:06:48.009 is made of flattened oil drums scrap metal it 00:06:48.009 --> 00:06:50.050 highlights the recycling the resourcefulness 00:06:50.050 --> 00:06:52.970 of it it really drives home that this isn't a 00:06:52.970 --> 00:06:55.709 local issue it's a human issue it's what humans 00:06:55.709 --> 00:06:57.769 do when they need shelter and the system offers 00:06:57.769 --> 00:07:00.790 them absolutely nothing and actually that segues 00:07:00.790 --> 00:07:03.149 perfectly into the history because i think we 00:07:03.149 --> 00:07:07.100 have this bias where We assume slums are something 00:07:07.100 --> 00:07:09.300 that happens over there, you know, in the global 00:07:09.300 --> 00:07:11.839 south. Yeah. But if we rewind the clock. If you 00:07:11.839 --> 00:07:14.019 rewind to the 19th century, the global south 00:07:14.019 --> 00:07:16.339 conditions were right here in the west. I mean, 00:07:16.360 --> 00:07:18.860 London, New York, Paris, they were the original 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:22.040 mega slums. We tend to forget that the whole 00:07:22.040 --> 00:07:24.819 Dickensian world wasn't fiction. It was reporting. 00:07:25.079 --> 00:07:27.160 I was reading the descriptions of Victorian London 00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:29.160 in the source material. And honestly, they make 00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:30.920 Oliver Twist look like a sanitized documentary. 00:07:31.279 --> 00:07:33.600 Oh, it was horrific. You have to remember. This 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:35.920 was the Industrial Revolution. The engines of 00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:38.240 industry were turning and they needed bodies. 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:41.319 People were pouring into London from the countryside, 00:07:41.439 --> 00:07:44.279 but the housing just wasn't there. So what happened? 00:07:44.420 --> 00:07:47.259 The wealthy fled the center. This is the beginning 00:07:47.259 --> 00:07:50.639 of suburban flight. And the poor crammed into 00:07:50.639 --> 00:07:54.459 these rotting post -medieval streetscapes. There 00:07:54.459 --> 00:07:57.259 was this quote from Friedrich Engels. He called 00:07:57.259 --> 00:07:59.980 them cattle sheds for human beings. Angles did 00:07:59.980 --> 00:08:02.060 not mince words. He was walking these streets. 00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:05.139 He was seeing the degradation firsthand. But 00:08:05.139 --> 00:08:07.339 the description that always, always sticks with 00:08:07.339 --> 00:08:10.100 me is from Cardinal Wiseman. He wrote about an 00:08:10.100 --> 00:08:12.720 area in Westminster, right near the Abbey, the 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.500 seat of religious power, and he called it the 00:08:15.500 --> 00:08:18.310 Devil's Acre. The Devil's Acre. That sounds like 00:08:18.310 --> 00:08:19.990 something out of a horror movie. It was a horror 00:08:19.990 --> 00:08:22.670 movie. He described it as a labyrinth of lanes. 00:08:22.990 --> 00:08:26.029 He talked about nests of ignorance and vice where 00:08:26.029 --> 00:08:28.149 the atmosphere was typhus and the ventilation 00:08:28.149 --> 00:08:31.149 was cholera. Wow. And this wasn't on the outskirts 00:08:31.149 --> 00:08:32.889 of town where nobody looked. This was the heart 00:08:32.889 --> 00:08:35.269 of the empire. You could probably smell the Devil's 00:08:35.269 --> 00:08:38.590 Acre from the houses of parliament. And across 00:08:38.590 --> 00:08:40.629 the Atlantic, New York wasn't doing any better. 00:08:40.710 --> 00:08:43.429 In fact, in some ways, it was even wilder. New 00:08:43.429 --> 00:08:45.950 York was the frontier of the slum. If you've 00:08:45.950 --> 00:08:47.789 seen the movie Gangs of New York, you know about 00:08:47.789 --> 00:08:50.549 the five points. Right. That was the first true 00:08:50.549 --> 00:08:54.850 American slum popping up around 1825. And the 00:08:54.850 --> 00:08:57.269 geography of it, it tells you everything about 00:08:57.269 --> 00:09:00.110 why slums form, where they form. Do you know 00:09:00.110 --> 00:09:01.970 where it was built? It was built on a lake, wasn't 00:09:01.970 --> 00:09:03.889 it? Or a pond? The Collect Pond. But not just, 00:09:03.909 --> 00:09:06.149 you know, a nice pond. It was a body of water 00:09:06.149 --> 00:09:08.529 where slaughterhouses and tanneries had been 00:09:08.529 --> 00:09:12.409 dumping their awful chemicals and blood for decades. 00:09:12.610 --> 00:09:15.460 Lovely. So a toxic swamp. A toxic swamp right 00:09:15.460 --> 00:09:18.200 in the middle of Manhattan. So the city decides 00:09:18.200 --> 00:09:21.379 to fill in this toxic soup with landfill to create 00:09:21.379 --> 00:09:24.519 real estate. But they do a rush job. The drainage 00:09:24.519 --> 00:09:27.279 is broken. Of course. So they build houses on 00:09:27.279 --> 00:09:30.220 top of it. And immediately the houses start sinking. 00:09:30.340 --> 00:09:33.120 They start shifting. The basements fill with 00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:36.080 this toxic sludge oozing up from below. And that's 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:38.059 where the poorest people, the freed slaves, the 00:09:38.059 --> 00:09:40.059 Irish immigrants fling the famine. That's where 00:09:40.059 --> 00:09:42.960 they ended up. Exactly. It became this dense, 00:09:43.019 --> 00:09:46.779 sinking, chaotic melting pot. It was bad land. 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:49.039 And that is a rule of real estate that holds 00:09:49.039 --> 00:09:52.100 true to this day. The poor end up on the land 00:09:52.100 --> 00:09:54.059 that nobody else wants. If the land is sinking, 00:09:54.240 --> 00:09:57.220 if it smells, if it's dangerous, that's where 00:09:57.220 --> 00:09:59.940 the slum takes root. So here is the million dollar 00:09:59.940 --> 00:10:02.860 question. If London and New York were absolute 00:10:02.860 --> 00:10:07.179 hellscapes in 1850, why aren't they now? I mean, 00:10:07.179 --> 00:10:09.340 we still have poverty in New York, sure, and 00:10:09.340 --> 00:10:11.899 we have homelessness, but we don't have gissacondas 00:10:11.899 --> 00:10:14.500 made of tin cans sinking into toxic sludge in 00:10:14.500 --> 00:10:16.559 the middle of Manhattan. What changed? Well, 00:10:16.639 --> 00:10:18.679 we tend to think they just got rich over time, 00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:21.039 but it wasn't that simple. It was actually very 00:10:21.039 --> 00:10:23.139 deliberate, very aggressive policy. Between, 00:10:23.220 --> 00:10:26.639 say, the 1960s and 70s, the West essentially 00:10:26.639 --> 00:10:28.960 engineered the slum out of existence. What were 00:10:28.960 --> 00:10:30.799 the levers they pulled? Two main levers. First, 00:10:30.980 --> 00:10:33.659 massive investment in public transit. The London 00:10:33.659 --> 00:10:36.240 Underground, the New York subway, this was revolutionary. 00:10:36.299 --> 00:10:38.779 How does a train fix a slum? It allowed people 00:10:38.779 --> 00:10:40.779 to live further out where land was cheaper and 00:10:40.779 --> 00:10:42.340 commute in for work. You didn't have to sleep 00:10:42.340 --> 00:10:44.039 next to the factory anymore. You could live in 00:10:44.039 --> 00:10:46.539 a burrow and take a train. So the subway effectively 00:10:46.539 --> 00:10:49.519 expanded the available land for the poor. It 00:10:49.519 --> 00:10:52.139 democratized geography. And the second lever 00:10:52.139 --> 00:10:55.240 was public housing. The government finally stepped 00:10:55.240 --> 00:10:57.840 in in a huge way. They cleared the slums, often 00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:00.299 brutally, we have to admit. But they replaced 00:11:00.299 --> 00:11:03.000 them with council housing, with projects, with 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:05.399 subsidized apartments. They changed the supply 00:11:05.399 --> 00:11:07.500 equation. So they literally built their way out 00:11:07.500 --> 00:11:10.100 of it with concrete and rails. They did. But 00:11:10.100 --> 00:11:13.480 here is the tragic irony. Just as the West was 00:11:13.480 --> 00:11:15.879 solving its slum problem using these tools, the 00:11:15.879 --> 00:11:19.100 phenomenon was migrating. It was exploding in 00:11:19.100 --> 00:11:21.980 the global South Sub -Saharan Africa, South Asia, 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:25.909 East Asia, and the scale there... It makes Five 00:11:25.909 --> 00:11:28.190 Points look like a quaint little village. I read 00:11:28.190 --> 00:11:29.909 about places in the Central African Republic 00:11:29.909 --> 00:11:33.970 where the statistic is 95 .9%. 95 .9 % of the 00:11:33.970 --> 00:11:36.429 urban population living in slum conditions. At 00:11:36.429 --> 00:11:38.110 that point, the slum isn't a neighborhood in 00:11:38.110 --> 00:11:40.250 the city. No. The slum is the city. That is the 00:11:40.250 --> 00:11:43.110 terrifying distinction. In those contexts, formal 00:11:43.110 --> 00:11:45.529 housing is the anomaly. The slum is the standard. 00:11:45.769 --> 00:11:47.750 So we've established what they are and where 00:11:47.750 --> 00:11:49.590 they came from historically. But we need to get 00:11:49.590 --> 00:11:52.340 to the why. Why are millions and millions of 00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:54.779 people leaving the countryside to move into a 00:11:54.779 --> 00:11:57.620 sinking house on a toxic landfill? What is the 00:11:57.620 --> 00:11:59.860 engine driving this massive migration? Well, 00:11:59.960 --> 00:12:02.690 it's the classic economic push and pull. But 00:12:02.690 --> 00:12:05.470 the push has changed dramatically. Historically, 00:12:05.549 --> 00:12:08.370 people left farms because they wanted to. Now 00:12:08.370 --> 00:12:11.330 they leave because they have to. Right. Mechanization 00:12:11.330 --> 00:12:13.970 of agriculture. Exactly. A single tractor can 00:12:13.970 --> 00:12:17.250 do the work of 100 men. So agriculture produces 00:12:17.250 --> 00:12:20.950 more food but far, far fewer jobs. At the same 00:12:20.950 --> 00:12:23.730 time, rural populations are still growing. So 00:12:23.730 --> 00:12:25.990 you have this huge surplus of people with absolutely 00:12:25.990 --> 00:12:28.149 no way to survive in the village. So the village 00:12:28.149 --> 00:12:30.350 is effectively evicting them. The economy of 00:12:30.350 --> 00:12:33.179 the village is evicting them. to the city. And 00:12:33.179 --> 00:12:35.860 the city, it promises jobs. It promises better 00:12:35.860 --> 00:12:38.740 schools. And interestingly, even a slum school 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:41.100 is often perceived as better than what's available 00:12:41.100 --> 00:12:43.539 in a remote forgotten village. I saw a stat from 00:12:43.539 --> 00:12:46.120 Surabaya, Indonesia that really backed this up. 00:12:46.220 --> 00:12:49.679 Something like 95 .8 % of migrants said they 00:12:49.679 --> 00:12:52.740 moved specifically for jobs. It's not about lifestyle. 00:12:52.860 --> 00:12:57.019 It's about survival. Pure economics. It is. But 00:12:57.019 --> 00:12:59.080 here's the thing that's so important to understand. 00:13:00.239 --> 00:13:02.899 They don't just move to the city as an abstract 00:13:02.899 --> 00:13:07.139 idea. They move to people. Migration always follows 00:13:07.139 --> 00:13:09.580 social networks. The chain migration concept. 00:13:09.779 --> 00:13:11.500 Right. You go where your cousin is. You go where 00:13:11.500 --> 00:13:13.600 your uncle is. And if your uncle lives in a slum 00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:15.259 because that's all he can afford, well, that's 00:13:15.259 --> 00:13:17.220 where you land. You sleep on his floor until 00:13:17.220 --> 00:13:19.720 you can build your own shack next door. It creates 00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:21.940 this chain reaction that concentrates poverty 00:13:21.940 --> 00:13:24.840 in very specific areas. And while all this is 00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:27.559 happening, there's also this issue of the government 00:13:27.559 --> 00:13:30.860 just... not seeing it coming or maybe choosing 00:13:30.860 --> 00:13:33.240 not to see it. That is the massive gap between 00:13:33.240 --> 00:13:36.080 urbanization and planning. Urbanization is this 00:13:36.080 --> 00:13:39.360 powerful bottom -up force people flood in. But 00:13:39.360 --> 00:13:42.059 local governments often lack the funds or the 00:13:42.059 --> 00:13:44.539 expertise or, frankly, the political will to 00:13:44.539 --> 00:13:47.720 manage it. Or worse, they choose blindness. You 00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:50.120 mean the concept of invisible land? It's a willful 00:13:50.120 --> 00:13:52.399 delusion. There are documented cases where governments 00:13:52.399 --> 00:13:55.320 have official maps where a sprawling slum is 00:13:55.320 --> 00:13:57.960 labeled as undeveloped or empty or forest. They 00:13:57.960 --> 00:13:59.460 just pretend it's not there. And if it's not 00:13:59.460 --> 00:14:01.179 on the official map, they don't have to provide 00:14:01.179 --> 00:14:03.019 services. They don't have to pick up the trash. 00:14:03.220 --> 00:14:05.120 They don't have to provide water. It's a way 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:07.799 of abdicating all responsibility. But there was 00:14:07.799 --> 00:14:10.200 one point in the research that really stood out 00:14:10.200 --> 00:14:12.820 to me. And I think this is the key to understanding 00:14:12.820 --> 00:14:16.220 why slums look the way they do. It was this idea 00:14:16.220 --> 00:14:20.460 that labor is the primary architect. of the slum 00:14:20.460 --> 00:14:23.059 this is a crucial insight and it's largely coming 00:14:23.059 --> 00:14:25.960 from more recent ethnographic research particularly 00:14:25.960 --> 00:14:30.299 a study from 2017. we have this image of slums 00:14:30.299 --> 00:14:33.580 as chaotic and random you know oh they just built 00:14:33.580 --> 00:14:36.659 a shack wherever right disorganized but this 00:14:36.659 --> 00:14:39.320 research suggests that form follows function 00:14:39.320 --> 00:14:43.720 in a very deliberate way the houses the alleys 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:46.039 the whole layout is self -constructed specifically 00:14:46.039 --> 00:14:48.980 to facilitate work Can you give us an example? 00:14:49.080 --> 00:14:51.080 Because that sounds a little abstract. Okay, 00:14:51.120 --> 00:14:53.500 let's look at a specific story. Take the case 00:14:53.500 --> 00:14:56.940 of a favela in Machio, Brazil called Favela Suru 00:14:56.940 --> 00:14:59.559 da Capote. It was started by dismissed sugarcane 00:14:59.559 --> 00:15:01.980 workers who migrated to the city. They were desperate 00:15:01.980 --> 00:15:04.139 for work. Okay, so they need an income first 00:15:04.139 --> 00:15:06.779 and foremost. Right. And they chose a very specific 00:15:06.779 --> 00:15:10.179 terrain, the banks of a lagoon. Now, a city planner 00:15:10.179 --> 00:15:12.139 would look at that and say, that's flood prone, 00:15:12.399 --> 00:15:15.139 that's unstable, that's dangerous. But the workers 00:15:15.139 --> 00:15:18.549 looked at it and saw gold. Or rather, they saw 00:15:18.549 --> 00:15:22.070 mussels. Mussels. The lagoon was full of saru 00:15:22.070 --> 00:15:25.389 mussels. And it turned out that 80 % of the residents 00:15:25.389 --> 00:15:27.450 ended up making their living from mussel fishing. 00:15:28.079 --> 00:15:30.100 So they built their homes right on the banks 00:15:30.100 --> 00:15:32.740 to be close to the boats. They built the alleys 00:15:32.740 --> 00:15:34.700 just wide enough to carry baskets of shells. 00:15:35.240 --> 00:15:38.299 The slum was actually a perfectly adapted factory 00:15:38.299 --> 00:15:41.000 for their specific livelihood. So it wasn't just 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:43.000 housing. It was an industrial complex. Exactly. 00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:45.639 Now, here is where the story gets tragic. The 00:15:45.639 --> 00:15:47.960 government comes in and says, these poor people 00:15:47.960 --> 00:15:50.820 are living in squalor. We must save them. So 00:15:50.820 --> 00:15:53.159 they initiated a resettlement program. They moved 00:15:53.159 --> 00:15:55.659 the entire community to formal housing. Nice, 00:15:55.659 --> 00:15:58.200 clean, concrete blocks. That's good on paper. 00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:00.320 But it was miles away from the lagoon. Oh no. 00:16:00.460 --> 00:16:03.080 What happened? The community's economy collapsed. 00:16:03.200 --> 00:16:05.860 They couldn't fish anymore. The architecture 00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:07.919 of the new apartment blocks didn't allow for 00:16:07.919 --> 00:16:10.139 shucking muscles in the living room. It smells. 00:16:10.840 --> 00:16:13.340 It's messy. It clogs the plumbing. The solution 00:16:13.340 --> 00:16:16.259 completely destroyed their economy. They solved 00:16:16.259 --> 00:16:18.919 the housing problem, but they created a livelihood 00:16:18.919 --> 00:16:21.860 problem. They destroyed it. And that is such 00:16:21.860 --> 00:16:24.220 a powerful example of how top -down planning 00:16:24.220 --> 00:16:27.679 completely misses the point. They saw poor people. 00:16:28.250 --> 00:16:30.850 But they didn't see workers. They didn't understand 00:16:30.850 --> 00:16:33.289 that the slum was a tool for survival. And we 00:16:33.289 --> 00:16:35.830 can't ignore the historical roots of this, particularly 00:16:35.830 --> 00:16:38.629 colonialism. Many of the biggest slums in the 00:16:38.629 --> 00:16:40.769 global south aren't accidental. They are the 00:16:40.769 --> 00:16:44.269 direct legacy of segregation. Absolutely. Nairobi 00:16:44.269 --> 00:16:46.409 is a prime example. It was created by Europeans 00:16:46.409 --> 00:16:49.529 essentially as a depot for the railroad. They 00:16:49.529 --> 00:16:52.269 viewed Africans as temporary migrants. So they 00:16:52.269 --> 00:16:53.769 needed their labor, but they didn't want them 00:16:53.769 --> 00:16:55.970 as neighbors. Exactly. So they didn't build neighborhoods 00:16:55.970 --> 00:16:58.370 for them. They provided beds. spaces. That was 00:16:58.370 --> 00:17:00.549 the official term. Just a place for a single 00:17:00.549 --> 00:17:03.490 man to sleep before going back to work. But people 00:17:03.490 --> 00:17:06.069 have families. People have lives. They don't 00:17:06.069 --> 00:17:08.690 want to be temporary. Of course not. So they 00:17:08.690 --> 00:17:10.950 built their own homes on the margins illegally. 00:17:11.450 --> 00:17:13.509 And that was the start of places like Kibera. 00:17:13.529 --> 00:17:16.549 And Mumbai. Yeah. The story of Dharavi is similar, 00:17:16.630 --> 00:17:18.950 isn't it? Dharavi, which is now one of the most 00:17:18.950 --> 00:17:20.809 famous slums in the world, you probably know 00:17:20.809 --> 00:17:23.130 it from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, has an 00:17:23.130 --> 00:17:27.180 almost identical origin story. In 1887, the British 00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:29.579 colonial government expelled all the tanneries 00:17:29.579 --> 00:17:31.740 and other noxious industries from the city center. 00:17:31.900 --> 00:17:35.140 The classic NMB approach. Not in my backyard. 00:17:35.359 --> 00:17:38.339 Exactly. They said, go do your smelly leather 00:17:38.339 --> 00:17:41.380 work on the northern fringe of the city. That 00:17:41.380 --> 00:17:44.269 fringe was Dharavi. They provided no infrastructure, 00:17:44.529 --> 00:17:47.690 no water, no sewers. They just said, go. So the 00:17:47.690 --> 00:17:49.670 workers moved there, built shacks around the 00:17:49.670 --> 00:17:52.009 tanneries, and a century later, it's a mega slum 00:17:52.009 --> 00:17:54.970 of a million people. It's just amazing and depressing 00:17:54.970 --> 00:17:57.730 how a decision made 150 years ago by a colonial 00:17:57.730 --> 00:18:00.390 officer can dictate where millions of people 00:18:00.390 --> 00:18:03.609 live today. It creates a path dependency. Once 00:18:03.609 --> 00:18:05.869 a settlement is established, even on bad land, 00:18:06.150 --> 00:18:08.630 it has a gravity of its own that's very hard 00:18:08.630 --> 00:18:11.289 to reverse. So let's pivot to the anatomy of 00:18:11.289 --> 00:18:14.829 a slum today. If you're flying over a city or 00:18:14.829 --> 00:18:17.309 looking at a satellite map, how do you spot them? 00:18:17.369 --> 00:18:19.509 Where do they actually form? Well, the first 00:18:19.509 --> 00:18:23.099 rule of slum formation is... Find the land nobody 00:18:23.099 --> 00:18:25.660 else wants. The leftover. The dangerous leftovers. 00:18:26.039 --> 00:18:28.500 You're looking for steep slopes that are prone 00:18:28.500 --> 00:18:31.420 to landslides, like in Rio. You're looking for 00:18:31.420 --> 00:18:34.440 flood -prone valleys and marshlands, riverbanks, 00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:36.799 right next to trash dumps or railway tracks. 00:18:37.099 --> 00:18:39.299 We talked about the Cleck Pond in New York being 00:18:39.299 --> 00:18:42.259 a toxic swamp. It seems that rule hasn't changed 00:18:42.259 --> 00:18:45.279 in two centuries. But why there? Is it just because 00:18:45.279 --> 00:18:47.730 it's free? It's because it's free, yes, but it's 00:18:47.730 --> 00:18:50.509 also to avoid detection. This is what you could 00:18:50.509 --> 00:18:53.450 call the natural camouflage strategy. Okay. When 00:18:53.450 --> 00:18:55.569 a settlement is young, the biggest threat is 00:18:55.569 --> 00:18:57.789 the government coming in and bulldozing it. If 00:18:57.789 --> 00:18:59.910 you build on a steep slope or deep in a marsh, 00:19:00.109 --> 00:19:02.690 the officials are less likely to notice you or, 00:19:02.769 --> 00:19:05.309 frankly, less likely to care enough to come in 00:19:05.309 --> 00:19:07.970 and kick you out immediately. It buys you time. 00:19:07.970 --> 00:19:09.769 It buys you time to establish that possession 00:19:09.769 --> 00:19:12.859 is nine -tenths of the law. Exactly. And then 00:19:12.859 --> 00:19:15.359 the evolution begins. It starts with tents, maybe 00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:17.960 some plastic sheeting, very temporary materials. 00:19:18.299 --> 00:19:20.940 But as the settlement survives, as the threat 00:19:20.940 --> 00:19:23.740 of immediate eviction fades, people start investing. 00:19:23.900 --> 00:19:27.500 They switch to wood, then to brick, then to concrete 00:19:27.500 --> 00:19:30.440 blocks. It solidifies. It does. And contrary 00:19:30.440 --> 00:19:33.180 to the chaos theory, it becomes highly organized. 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:35.960 An informal association or, let's be honest, 00:19:36.059 --> 00:19:38.940 often a local gang or a warlord will take charge. 00:19:39.369 --> 00:19:44.150 They might charge fees to newcomers for the right 00:19:44.150 --> 00:19:46.930 to build a shack. They manage disputes. It becomes 00:19:46.930 --> 00:19:49.190 a parallel state. And with that comes a parallel 00:19:49.190 --> 00:19:51.190 economy. I think this is another thing people 00:19:51.190 --> 00:19:53.910 really miss. We think of slums as places of mass 00:19:53.910 --> 00:19:56.519 unemployment. But they're buzzing with work. 00:19:56.660 --> 00:19:58.660 They are massive economic engines, but it's all 00:19:58.660 --> 00:20:00.779 off the books. We call it the informal economy. 00:20:01.119 --> 00:20:03.180 And to give you an idea of the scale, in a country 00:20:03.180 --> 00:20:06.319 like Benin, slum dwellers make up 75 % of all 00:20:06.319 --> 00:20:09.480 informal workers. In Kenya, the informal sector 00:20:09.480 --> 00:20:13.599 is estimated to be 42 % of the entire GDP. 42%. 00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:15.900 That's nearly half the economy running without 00:20:15.900 --> 00:20:18.299 contracts, without taxes, without any regulation. 00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:22.099 Correct. And the work varies wildly. You have 00:20:22.099 --> 00:20:24.460 the illicit informal work. So the legal stuff 00:20:24.460 --> 00:20:27.960 just done illegally. Right. Street vending, domestic 00:20:27.960 --> 00:20:31.940 work, and crucially, recycling. Slums are often 00:20:31.940 --> 00:20:34.720 the recycling plants of the entire city. People 00:20:34.720 --> 00:20:37.579 collecting plastic, sorting metal. It's dirty, 00:20:37.660 --> 00:20:39.500 dangerous work, but it keeps the city clean. 00:20:39.920 --> 00:20:42.740 You also have things like product assembly, embroidery. 00:20:43.359 --> 00:20:45.059 And then there's the illicit side. The shadow 00:20:45.059 --> 00:20:48.640 markets. Drug trafficking, brewing moonshine 00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:52.079 like Changa in Kenya, which is incredibly potent 00:20:52.079 --> 00:20:54.500 and very dangerous producing fake goods. The 00:20:54.500 --> 00:20:57.160 knockoff designer bags you see in markets. Exactly. 00:20:57.259 --> 00:20:59.480 But whether it's illicit or illicit, the trap 00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:01.519 is the same. There are no contracts, no labor 00:21:01.519 --> 00:21:03.500 rights, no safety goggles. And often you have 00:21:03.500 --> 00:21:05.660 to pay bribes to the police or local officials 00:21:05.660 --> 00:21:08.140 just to keep working. It's a very, very vulnerable 00:21:08.140 --> 00:21:11.319 existence. That vulnerability leads us right 00:21:11.319 --> 00:21:14.500 into the day to day human experience. We can 00:21:14.500 --> 00:21:16.839 talk about economics and systems all day, but 00:21:16.839 --> 00:21:19.480 what is it actually like to wake up there? We 00:21:19.480 --> 00:21:21.420 mentioned lack of infrastructure, but there was 00:21:21.420 --> 00:21:23.859 one concept in the notes called the water paradox 00:21:23.859 --> 00:21:26.799 that I need you to explain, because the math 00:21:26.799 --> 00:21:28.920 just doesn't seem to make sense. It is deeply, 00:21:29.019 --> 00:21:32.019 deeply unfair, and it defies all standard market 00:21:32.019 --> 00:21:35.680 logic. The paradox is that the poor often pay 00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:39.700 far more for water per liter than the rich. How 00:21:39.700 --> 00:21:42.319 is that even possible? Usually, if you're rich, 00:21:42.339 --> 00:21:44.579 you buy the premium stuff and it costs more. 00:21:44.819 --> 00:21:47.299 Think about the delivery mechanism. If you are 00:21:47.299 --> 00:21:50.079 in a formal, wealthy neighborhood, you have a 00:21:50.079 --> 00:21:52.420 pipe connected directly to your house. You turn 00:21:52.420 --> 00:21:54.880 a tap, water comes out. You pay the municipal 00:21:54.880 --> 00:21:57.119 rate, which is usually subsidized by the state 00:21:57.119 --> 00:21:59.019 to keep voters happy. It's cheap. OK, that makes 00:21:59.019 --> 00:22:01.000 sense. Now, if you live in a slum, there are 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:03.240 no pipes. The utility company doesn't serve you. 00:22:03.319 --> 00:22:05.140 So how do you get water? You have to buy it from 00:22:05.140 --> 00:22:07.619 a private vendor, someone who trucks it in or 00:22:07.619 --> 00:22:10.210 carries it in jerry cans on a handcart. So you're 00:22:10.210 --> 00:22:12.549 paying for the manual labor of delivery. You're 00:22:12.549 --> 00:22:14.490 paying for the labor, you're paying for the transport, 00:22:14.589 --> 00:22:16.349 and you're paying for the profit margin of the 00:22:16.349 --> 00:22:18.690 middleman. Plus, you can't buy in bulk because 00:22:18.690 --> 00:22:20.470 you have nowhere to store it, so you buy small 00:22:20.470 --> 00:22:23.529 amounts daily. The markup can be astronomical, 00:22:23.950 --> 00:22:27.369 sometimes 10 to 20 times what a wealthy person 00:22:27.369 --> 00:22:30.130 pays for their tap water. You are paying a premium 00:22:30.130 --> 00:22:33.369 for poverty. That is infuriating. It's literally 00:22:33.369 --> 00:22:36.700 a tax on being poor. And there's a sanitation 00:22:36.700 --> 00:22:39.420 issue. We mentioned overcrowding, but let's really 00:22:39.420 --> 00:22:41.900 paint that picture. It's a crisis of density. 00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:45.559 In a slum in Kolkata, India, you might have 10 00:22:45.559 --> 00:22:48.380 people sharing a single room of 45 square meters. 00:22:48.819 --> 00:22:51.220 Now imagine the bathroom situation for that building. 00:22:51.660 --> 00:22:54.380 In Hibera, in Nairobi, the population density 00:22:54.380 --> 00:22:57.599 is roughly 2 ,000 people per hectare. 2 ,000 00:22:57.599 --> 00:22:58.859 people per hectare. That's like a permanently 00:22:58.859 --> 00:23:01.180 packed rock concert. It is. And when you have 00:23:01.180 --> 00:23:03.279 that many people sharing that few pit latrines, 00:23:03.380 --> 00:23:05.920 disease isn't a risk. It's an absolute certainty. 00:23:06.319 --> 00:23:09.319 Cholera, typhoid, malaria, they spread like wildfire. 00:23:09.500 --> 00:23:10.940 And children are the ones who take the biggest 00:23:10.940 --> 00:23:13.930 hit. Child malnutrition is just widespread. In 00:23:13.930 --> 00:23:17.029 slums in Mumbai and New Delhi, nearly 50 percent 00:23:17.029 --> 00:23:19.190 of children under the age of five are stunted. 00:23:19.470 --> 00:23:22.089 That means their bodies and their brains aren't 00:23:22.089 --> 00:23:24.269 developing properly. And it's not just about 00:23:24.269 --> 00:23:25.990 not having enough food. It's about something 00:23:25.990 --> 00:23:29.710 called environmental enteropathy. The constant 00:23:29.710 --> 00:23:31.930 assault of fecal bacteria from the environment 00:23:31.930 --> 00:23:34.329 prevents their guts from absorbing nutrients. 00:23:34.390 --> 00:23:37.029 So even if they eat, they effectively starve. 00:23:37.269 --> 00:23:39.789 And if you get sick, I mean, can you call an 00:23:39.789 --> 00:23:42.920 ambulance? This brings us back to that. non -notified 00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:45.880 problem we touched on. Many slums are not officially 00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:47.759 recognized by the government. They don't exist 00:23:47.759 --> 00:23:50.160 on the map. And if you aren't notified, you don't 00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:51.880 get a clinic. You don't get your health data 00:23:51.880 --> 00:23:54.599 collected. And crucially, emergency services 00:23:54.599 --> 00:23:57.940 often refuse to enter. They just won't go. Ambulances 00:23:57.940 --> 00:24:00.119 won't go there. The roads are too narrow or they 00:24:00.119 --> 00:24:02.740 fear for their safety or simply because the address 00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:05.940 doesn't exist. Third shack past the blue tarp 00:24:05.940 --> 00:24:08.799 on the left isn't on the GPS. Yeah. You are completely 00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:11.680 and utterly on your own. It's terrifying. And 00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:13.359 on top of all the health risks, you have the 00:24:13.359 --> 00:24:15.599 physical risks. We mentioned the landslides earlier. 00:24:15.880 --> 00:24:18.640 Yes. Because slums are built on that undesirable 00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:21.099 land, when natural disasters hit, they are always 00:24:21.099 --> 00:24:22.859 the first to suffer, and they suffer the worst. 00:24:23.559 --> 00:24:27.119 Landslides in Rio, floods in Dhaka. And often, 00:24:27.299 --> 00:24:30.319 disaster creates slums. Think of the earthquake 00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:33.640 in Haiti in 2010. The so -called temporary tent 00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:36.559 cities set up for survivors. Many of them just 00:24:36.559 --> 00:24:39.380 solidified. They became permanent slums. And 00:24:39.380 --> 00:24:41.819 then there's the human -made risk. the violence, 00:24:42.099 --> 00:24:45.339 we have to talk about safety. It is a very complex 00:24:45.339 --> 00:24:47.700 picture. We shouldn't demonize all slums as war 00:24:47.700 --> 00:24:50.480 zones. Many are incredibly tight knit communities 00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:52.720 where people look out for each other. But yes, 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:55.059 high crime rates exist in some slums and they're 00:24:55.059 --> 00:24:57.200 often driven by those illicit economies we talked 00:24:57.200 --> 00:25:00.119 about. The drugs, the gambling and the gang wars 00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:02.180 that come with controlling that territory. And 00:25:02.180 --> 00:25:04.480 specifically the risk to women. Gender based 00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:07.420 violence is a massive and I would say structural 00:25:07.420 --> 00:25:09.579 risk. I mean, imagine if you don't have a toilet 00:25:09.579 --> 00:25:11.700 in your home. You have to use a shared public 00:25:11.700 --> 00:25:14.650 toilet down a dark, unlit... alley 200 meters 00:25:14.650 --> 00:25:16.069 away. And you have to go in the middle of the 00:25:16.069 --> 00:25:19.369 night. Exactly. Women are at an extremely high 00:25:19.369 --> 00:25:21.490 risk of assault just trying to use the bathroom 00:25:21.490 --> 00:25:24.009 at night. It's a spatial design that enables 00:25:24.009 --> 00:25:26.670 violence. And because of the immense economic 00:25:26.670 --> 00:25:29.670 stress men unable to find work, everyone living 00:25:29.670 --> 00:25:32.609 in cramped conditions, domestic violence is often 00:25:32.609 --> 00:25:35.150 exacerbated. And going to the police isn't really 00:25:35.150 --> 00:25:38.789 a viable option, is it? Often, no. The police 00:25:38.789 --> 00:25:41.950 are viewed with deep, deep distrust. Residents 00:25:41.950 --> 00:25:43.710 fear that if they call the police, it will just 00:25:43.710 --> 00:25:46.490 lead to harassment, demands for bribes, or even 00:25:46.490 --> 00:25:49.410 worse, it could trigger an eviction. So crimes 00:25:49.410 --> 00:25:51.650 go unreported and the cycle of violence just 00:25:51.650 --> 00:25:54.390 continues. It feels like such an intractable 00:25:54.390 --> 00:25:57.309 problem. Every single layer we peel back just 00:25:57.309 --> 00:25:59.710 reveals another layer of difficulty. But we have 00:25:59.710 --> 00:26:01.609 to talk about solutions. Governments have been 00:26:01.609 --> 00:26:04.109 trying to fix slums for over a century. What 00:26:04.109 --> 00:26:06.650 have they tried and what actually works? Because 00:26:06.650 --> 00:26:08.329 surely we've learned something since Victorian 00:26:08.329 --> 00:26:10.900 London. We have certainly learned a lot about 00:26:10.900 --> 00:26:13.039 what doesn't work. Let's look at the four main 00:26:13.039 --> 00:26:14.980 strategies that have been deployed globally over 00:26:14.980 --> 00:26:17.660 the years. Strategy A is the brute force method. 00:26:17.980 --> 00:26:21.380 Slum removal or demolition. The bulldozer approach. 00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:24.700 This is illegal. Knock it down. That's it exactly. 00:26:25.319 --> 00:26:27.960 Governments declare the slum a hazard. They send 00:26:27.960 --> 00:26:30.259 in the police and the dozers and they flatten 00:26:30.259 --> 00:26:33.069 the entire neighborhood. Does it work? In terms 00:26:33.069 --> 00:26:35.390 of getting rid of the buildings? Yes, for a time. 00:26:35.569 --> 00:26:38.369 In terms of solving the problem? Absolutely not. 00:26:38.529 --> 00:26:42.509 It is a spectacular and cruel failure. It destroys 00:26:42.509 --> 00:26:45.650 homes. It destroys billions of dollars in informal 00:26:45.650 --> 00:26:48.109 assets capital that poor people have scraped 00:26:48.109 --> 00:26:51.329 together over decades. But it doesn't solve poverty. 00:26:51.589 --> 00:26:53.970 And crucially, the city still needs the workers. 00:26:54.380 --> 00:26:57.099 Right. The city still needs the maids, the recyclers, 00:26:57.140 --> 00:26:59.299 the construction workers, so the people don't 00:26:59.299 --> 00:27:01.279 disappear. They just move five miles down the 00:27:01.279 --> 00:27:03.920 road and start a new slum. It's a vicious, cruel 00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:06.140 game of whack -a -mole. Okay, so that's a bust. 00:27:06.420 --> 00:27:08.960 What about strategy B, relocation? This is the 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:11.579 nicer version where they build new housing, but 00:27:11.579 --> 00:27:14.099 usually far away, right? Right. The pitch is 00:27:14.099 --> 00:27:15.519 they're going to build you a nice, clean apartment, 00:27:15.619 --> 00:27:17.900 but land is expensive in the center, so we built 00:27:17.900 --> 00:27:20.839 it 20 kilometers out on the periphery. We saw 00:27:20.839 --> 00:27:22.960 this with the Sabarmati Riverfront project in 00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:26.859 India. They moved 19 ,000 families, but they 00:27:26.859 --> 00:27:29.579 moved them to housing nine kilometers away. Which, 00:27:29.700 --> 00:27:32.660 in a city with bad traffic, is basically a lifetime 00:27:32.660 --> 00:27:35.279 away. It disconnects people from their jobs and 00:27:35.279 --> 00:27:38.180 their social safety networks. If you are a maid 00:27:38.180 --> 00:27:40.599 working in the city center and you're suddenly 00:27:40.599 --> 00:27:42.859 moved nine kilometers away, you can't afford 00:27:42.859 --> 00:27:45.779 the bus fare. You lose your job. Eventually, 00:27:45.799 --> 00:27:48.579 what we see is that many people abandon the new, 00:27:48.660 --> 00:27:51.599 nice housing and move back to a slum closer to 00:27:51.599 --> 00:27:53.920 work. They vote with their feet. So that brings 00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:57.079 us to strategy C. This one has a specific name, 00:27:57.160 --> 00:28:00.039 right? The Turner method. Yes. Named after an 00:28:00.039 --> 00:28:02.259 architect and theorist named John Turner, who 00:28:02.259 --> 00:28:05.119 was writing in the 1970s. His idea was really 00:28:05.119 --> 00:28:07.740 radical at the time. He essentially said, government, 00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:10.460 stop building houses. You're bad at it. The poor 00:28:10.460 --> 00:28:12.440 are actually great at building their own houses. 00:28:12.519 --> 00:28:15.259 They just lack rights and services. So it's almost 00:28:15.259 --> 00:28:17.690 a libertarian approach to urban planning. In 00:28:17.690 --> 00:28:20.730 a way, yes. He argued that slums were a solution 00:28:20.730 --> 00:28:23.089 to the housing shortage, not the problem itself. 00:28:23.430 --> 00:28:25.789 He said governments should just give residents 00:28:25.789 --> 00:28:28.730 security of tenure, a legal promise not to evict 00:28:28.730 --> 00:28:31.190 them, and then provide basic services like sewers 00:28:31.190 --> 00:28:33.789 and streetlights. If you do that, the residents 00:28:33.789 --> 00:28:35.849 will use their own money and their own labor 00:28:35.849 --> 00:28:38.529 to upgrade their homes over time. The site and 00:28:38.529 --> 00:28:40.670 service model. Give them the plot and the pipe 00:28:40.670 --> 00:28:43.049 and let them build the walls. Exactly. And it 00:28:43.049 --> 00:28:45.970 has had some successes. Mexico City in the 70s 00:28:45.970 --> 00:28:49.069 and 80s successfully urbanized many of its periphery 00:28:49.069 --> 00:28:51.930 slums this way. Medellin in Colombia is another 00:28:51.930 --> 00:28:54.369 famous example where they used those cable cars, 00:28:54.529 --> 00:28:57.289 the metro cable, to connect hillside slums to 00:28:57.289 --> 00:28:59.869 the city's job market, integrating them. But, 00:28:59.869 --> 00:29:02.750 I sense a but coming. But the results are very 00:29:02.750 --> 00:29:06.559 mixed. In Jakarta, they tried this, and the conditions 00:29:06.559 --> 00:29:09.420 deteriorated back to slum status after just a 00:29:09.420 --> 00:29:12.619 few years. It turns out upgrading is really expensive 00:29:12.619 --> 00:29:15.299 for people living on the edge. And more importantly, 00:29:15.579 --> 00:29:17.640 it doesn't address the root cause of the problem. 00:29:17.980 --> 00:29:20.900 Low wages. You can give someone a sewer connection, 00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:23.579 but if they still only earn a dollar a day, they 00:29:23.579 --> 00:29:25.559 can't maintain the house. They can't pay the 00:29:25.559 --> 00:29:28.440 new water bill. So is there a strategy D? Is 00:29:28.440 --> 00:29:30.420 there anything that actually has a track record 00:29:30.420 --> 00:29:34.109 of lasting success? There is, but it's the hardest 00:29:34.109 --> 00:29:36.710 one because it requires massive political will 00:29:36.710 --> 00:29:39.849 and huge investment. It's the historical success 00:29:39.849 --> 00:29:42.710 story of the West. a combination of infrastructure 00:29:42.710 --> 00:29:44.849 plus public housing. So we're going back to the 00:29:44.849 --> 00:29:47.069 Victorian London example. We are. There was a 00:29:47.069 --> 00:29:49.490 man named Charles Pearson. He was in the UK Parliament 00:29:49.490 --> 00:29:52.329 in the mid -19th century. And he argued that 00:29:52.329 --> 00:29:54.170 the problem wasn't just the housing, it was the 00:29:54.170 --> 00:29:57.650 transport. He pushed relentlessly for mass transit, 00:29:57.710 --> 00:30:00.069 what became the London Underground. The tube 00:30:00.069 --> 00:30:02.710 saved London from its slums. In a very big way. 00:30:03.259 --> 00:30:05.380 It allowed the working poor to live in decent, 00:30:05.500 --> 00:30:08.279 affordable areas with lower rent and still commute 00:30:08.279 --> 00:30:11.039 to the docks and factories for work. It broke 00:30:11.039 --> 00:30:14.220 the terrible stranglehold of proximity. But it 00:30:14.220 --> 00:30:16.460 wasn't just the subway. The governments of the 00:30:16.460 --> 00:30:20.059 UK and France also engaged in massive state -led 00:30:20.059 --> 00:30:24.380 public housing programs. Post -1955, the UK demolished 00:30:24.380 --> 00:30:28.160 1 .5 million slum properties and resettled the 00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:30.759 residents in subsized council housing. So it 00:30:30.759 --> 00:30:32.819 requires big government spending. You can't just 00:30:32.819 --> 00:30:35.059 hack your way out of it with a clever low -cost 00:30:35.059 --> 00:30:38.140 trick. Huge sustained spending. It requires combining 00:30:38.140 --> 00:30:40.839 citywide infrastructure transport that actually 00:30:40.839 --> 00:30:43.460 works for the poor with affordable subsidized 00:30:43.460 --> 00:30:45.680 public housing. You need to tackle both the connectivity 00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:48.119 and the shelter itself. You have to treat housing 00:30:48.119 --> 00:30:50.859 as a basic human right, not just a market asset. 00:30:51.500 --> 00:30:53.240 It seems like we've come full circle. We started 00:30:53.240 --> 00:30:55.200 with the sheer scale of the problem, the billion 00:30:55.200 --> 00:30:57.559 people. We've looked at the history, the economic 00:30:57.559 --> 00:31:00.339 engines, the daily struggle, and all the failed 00:31:00.339 --> 00:31:02.960 attempts to fix it. So let's try to wrap this 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:04.819 up. What is the big overarching takeaway here? 00:31:05.130 --> 00:31:07.009 I think the summary is that slums are not an 00:31:07.009 --> 00:31:09.170 accident. They are not a glitch in the system. 00:31:09.369 --> 00:31:12.390 They are the predictable result of rapid urbanization 00:31:12.390 --> 00:31:14.730 colliding with a lack of planning and a global 00:31:14.730 --> 00:31:17.650 labor market that relies on cheap, informal workers. 00:31:17.910 --> 00:31:19.910 They are places of immense struggle, disease, 00:31:20.069 --> 00:31:22.450 hazard, violence, but they are also places of 00:31:22.450 --> 00:31:25.150 incredible resilience and frantic economic activity. 00:31:25.369 --> 00:31:29.029 And the so what for the listener. Why should 00:31:29.029 --> 00:31:31.069 someone listening in a comfortable apartment, 00:31:31.309 --> 00:31:34.579 maybe thousands of miles away, truly care about 00:31:34.579 --> 00:31:37.740 this because the informal is becoming the new 00:31:37.740 --> 00:31:40.220 normal for a huge chunk of humanity we cannot 00:31:40.220 --> 00:31:42.339 pretend the western model of the 20th century 00:31:42.339 --> 00:31:45.000 city is the only reality and addressing this 00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:47.059 isn't just about charity it's about global health 00:31:47.059 --> 00:31:49.799 epidemics don't respect slum borders a virus 00:31:49.799 --> 00:31:52.019 bred in overcrowding can travel first class eventually 00:31:52.019 --> 00:31:54.839 it's about economic stability and fundamentally 00:31:54.839 --> 00:31:57.099 it's about human rights it's about the future 00:31:57.099 --> 00:31:59.400 of our species really If we are now an urban 00:31:59.400 --> 00:32:01.960 species and the slum is the main form that the 00:32:01.960 --> 00:32:04.779 city is taking for billions, then the slum is 00:32:04.779 --> 00:32:07.140 the future of humanity unless we actively change 00:32:07.140 --> 00:32:10.000 course. It is. And I want to leave you and everyone 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:13.119 listening with a final provocative thought, something 00:32:13.119 --> 00:32:16.220 to really wrestle with. Lay it on us. There is 00:32:16.220 --> 00:32:18.759 an argument famously made by publications like 00:32:18.759 --> 00:32:20.640 The Economist that goes something like this. 00:32:21.059 --> 00:32:23.940 Good housing is obviously better than a slum, 00:32:23.940 --> 00:32:26.740 but a slum is better than none. That's a tough 00:32:26.740 --> 00:32:28.859 one to swallow. It feels almost like an apology 00:32:28.859 --> 00:32:31.160 for the situation. It creates a real tension. 00:32:31.259 --> 00:32:34.960 As cities continue to explode in size, are slums 00:32:34.960 --> 00:32:37.039 a temporary waiting room that we will eventually 00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:40.180 upgrade? Or are they the actual future of how 00:32:40.180 --> 00:32:42.559 the majority of the human species will live? 00:32:42.799 --> 00:32:44.920 And here is the real question I want the listener 00:32:44.920 --> 00:32:47.779 to ponder. We established that labor creates 00:32:47.779 --> 00:32:51.279 the slum people move for work. Can we ever fix 00:32:51.279 --> 00:32:53.480 the housing without fixing the economy first? 00:32:53.740 --> 00:32:56.200 Can we fix the roof? without fixing the wage. 00:32:56.359 --> 00:32:59.039 If the global economy relies on this massive 00:32:59.039 --> 00:33:02.380 pool of informal cheap labor, will it always, 00:33:02.579 --> 00:33:05.299 by necessity, produce informal cheap housing? 00:33:05.539 --> 00:33:08.519 Are the slums a bug in capitalism or are they 00:33:08.519 --> 00:33:11.140 a feature? That is a heavy, heavy question to 00:33:11.140 --> 00:33:14.519 end on. But that's why we do this. A huge thank 00:33:14.519 --> 00:33:17.180 you to everyone for listening to this deep dive. 00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:20.299 It's a complex and difficult topic, but hopefully 00:33:20.299 --> 00:33:22.619 we've peeled back a few layers today. Indeed. 00:33:22.740 --> 00:33:24.859 It's a conversation that needs to continue long 00:33:24.859 --> 00:33:27.019 after this. Keep thinking. Keep questioning. 00:33:27.259 --> 00:33:28.700 We'll see you on the next deep dive.