Development
While most shanty towns begin as precarious establishments haphazardly thrown together without basic social and civil services, over time many have undergone a significant amount of development. Often the residents themselves are responsible for the major improvements. Community organizations sometimes working alongside NGO's, private companies, and the government, set up connections to the municipal water supply, pave roads, and build local schools. Many of these shanties have become middle class suburbs. One such extreme example is the Los Olivos Neighborhood of Lima, Peru. The Megaplaza shopping mall, one of Lima's largest, along with gated communities, casinos, and even plastic surgery clinics, are just a few of many developments that have transformed what used to be a decrepit shanty. Brazilian favelas have also seen huge improvements in recent years, enough so to attract tourists who flock to catch a glimpse of the colorful lifestyle perched atop Rio de Janeiro's highlands. Development occurs over a long period of time and newer towns still lack basic services. Nevertheless there has been a general trend whereby shanties undergo gradual improvements, rather than relocation to even more distant parts of a metropolis and replacement by gated communities constructed over their ruins. Many shanty towns are starting to implement composting toilets and solar panels, also many of the people living in slums may have access to cell phones and even the internet.
Read more about this topic: Shanty Town
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Understanding child development takes the emphasis away from the child’s character—looking at the child as good or bad. The emphasis is put on behavior as communication. Discipline is thus seen as problem-solving. The child is helped to learn a more acceptable manner of communication.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“The young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)