For the first time in human history, the urban population of the world outnumbers the rural. More than one million people per week leave their rural homes to seek their future in the world’s cities. Many of these migrants end up living in unplanned and unofficial communities. According to United Nations estimates there are more than a billion squatters living today--one out of every six people on earth. This number is expected to double to two billion by 2030. And by the middle of the century there will be three billion squatters.
Squatters communities take on many forms, from the dense conglomeration of multi-story reinforced concrete structures of Rochina in Rio de Janeiro to the sprawling shantytowns of simple huts in Lagos, Nigeria. But they share a common history. People, mostly migrants from rural areas, came to the city in search of work. They were in need of affordable housing that could not be found on the open market. So they claimed a small piece of unused land and built a home. Other residents followed suit, and the result was a new community within the city.
I am working to photograph the people and architecture of the world’s urban squatter communities. I hope to gain a greater understanding of life in these communities, as understanding them is vital to understanding the future of the world’s megacities.
This informal urban growth is particularly evident in Lima, Peru. New migrants from the sierras and the selva, rural parts of the country in the mountains and jungle, come to the city seeking opportunity every day. They settle in the pueblos jovenes, or young towns that circle the city center and are constantly pushing outwards into the harsh desert landscape that surrounds Lima. The settlements begin with modest homes built by hand with plastic tarps or woven reeds. Many of the pueblos jovenes eventually evolve into legal neighborhoods with electricity, running water and local governments.
Traditional social theory believed that urbanization would follow industrialization. However many of the worlds megacities, particularly those in the developing world, are undergoing massive population growth at the same time they are experiencing a loss of industrial jobs and stagnant economies. Meanwhile, due to mechanized farming, industrial-scale agribusiness, civil war, draught and countless other factors, the hardships of rural life drives many to look for opportunity in the world’s urban centers.
In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a population greater than one million. Today there are 400, and by 2015 there will be more than 550. Lagos, Nigeria, for example, has grown from a population of 300,000 in 1950 to 14 million today.
Much of this growth is happening in squatter communities. Sao Paulo’s favelas contained 1.2 percent of its total population in 1973 and that number grew to 20 percent in 1993. Of the half-million people who migrate to Delhi each year, an estimated 400,000 live in the city’s slums. In Nigeria, nearly 80 percent of the urban population, more than 40 million people, live in squatter communities.
While much is written about the crime and poverty endemic to squatter communities, the realities of everyday life are often lost in the headlines. Many squatters are hard-working citizens who, through lack of education or poor job opportunities, are forced to work in low-paying jobs and do not earn enough to rent or purchase a legal home. The vast majority are not criminals and are merely looking for a safe place to live. As one squatter living under high-tension power lines in a favela in Sao Paulo told me, “my dream is to have a legal address”.
