Slum Upgrading and Participation: Lessons from Latin America (Directions in Development)

The United Nations currently estimates that there are approximately 837 million urban slum dwellers worldwide. If current trends and policies are not reversed, the total number of people living in urban slums could be close to 1.5 billion by 2020. The Cities Alliance is a global partnership of cities and their development partners that aims to help scale up successful approaches to slum upgrading and stop the growth of new slums. Its Cities Without Slums action plan aims to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers worldwide by 2020, a target which has been incorporated into the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, as Target 11. In this context, studying and disseminating successful approaches to slum upgrading is a task of paramount importance. This book offers five geographically and institutionally diverse case studies from Latin America, where some of the longest-running and most successful programs in this field have been conducted. Representing a...