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Reports

The seven myths of ‘slums’ - myth 2: the poor are to blame

Report / 8th December 2010

The deep-seated myth that the poor are to blame for their conditions of poverty echoes back to the earliest days of industrialisation in Western Europe. With a perverse inversion of cause and effect, the prevalence of extreme urban poverty and slum settlements is blamed...

The seven myths of ‘slums’ - myth 3: slums are places of crime, violence and social degradation

Report / 8th December 2010

A corollary of the myth that the poor are to blame for their poverty is the widespread prejudice against slums as places of social degradation and despair, and against slum residents as perpetrators of violence and crime...

The seven myths of ‘slums’ - myth 4: slums are an inevitable stage of development

Report / 8th December 2010

There is an underlying assumption to much of the debate surrounding slums and urban poverty: that the urban poor will get to our standard of living eventually, and countries of the South will rise to the same level of material affluence as the industrialised North, just so long as...

The seven myths of ‘slums’ - Myth 5: the free market can end slums

Report / 8th December 2010

According to the international institutions and powerful states that drive globalisation (along with most of the business community, conservative political parties, libertarian ideologues and the corporate-controlled media that gives voice to their concerns), we are told that social injustice can only be addressed by the proper application of some version of free market capitalism...