# Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World


![A Billion Squatters
frontpage](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0415933196.01._AA400_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)This
is a spin-off of an essay I did for envirosci about urbanization. I came
across it in a reading, ordered it through interlibrary loan, and it
arrived like a month later - think they had to get it from another
university. Really nice and readable book, with only one section that I
found not that interesting.

There might be as many as 1 bln. squatters in the world.

In some cities, they make up the majority, such as in Mumbai.

Squatters are often being cheated out of services, or have to pay many
times the going rate for water, electricity etc.

Given the right circumstances, which does not have to involve legal
ownership (in fact, some don’t want legal ownership), but needs a stable
situation and the knowledge that you will not be kicked out in the
short-run, it is amazing how squatters can contribute to their
communities, slowly building up their housing standard, often one wall
at a time, and extending infrastructure.

Squatting communities are often neither unhygienic or crime-infested.
These are only negative stereotypes.

How succesfull a squatter community is depends a lot on the politics
around - Rio and the area around Istanbul has been quite succesfull,
whereas Nigeria and Mumbai have not been so succesful.

Both NGOs and the UN (HABITAT) are quite unsuccesfull in helping
squatters, often they don’t even try.

How the US was founded by squatters, how they were legalized in LA and
driven off the land in NYC.

Modern squatters - left-radicals. But most squatters in developing
countries are more conservative.

Like Jane Jacobs says, wholesale redevelopment is almost always a
disaster, what is needed is incentives and gentle support in slow and
organic development.

Good book - I personally found the chapter on US historical squatter
movements not that interesting, but that’s just me.

[Net127 has some good insights.](http://net127.com/index.php?p=713)\
 [As does
BoingBoing.](http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/04/shadow_cities_the_un.html)

335 p.