What are the forces pushing people into the cities?
Slums grew most rapidly beginning in the late ’70s and continuing through the ’80s. It was the period of debt and debt-adjustment, and the cities started to grow because these policies had the most dramatic impacts on rural employment. But while these cities grew rapidly, urban investment—at least on a per capita basis—was declining dramatically under the so-called “structural adjustment programs” administered by the World Bank. The price for countries wanting to stay in the world economy was to restrict public spending and in some cases to literally dismantle public sectors precisely when that investment was most urgently needed to meet the demands of population growth. So the question then is: How did cities actually grow if there was no public investment, no new infrastructure? The answer: People bootstrapped urbanization through building shanties and their own infrastructures, eking out employment as domestics or street vendors or laborers. So, people begin to celebrate this miracl
