A sea of blue-tarp-covered shacks extended to the airport boundary, as if the fragile airport wall was holding back a tsunami of nearby informal settlements. Despite their differences, informal settlements often face similar struggles. Given that more than one billion people in the Global South – a quarter of the world’s urban population – live in informal settlements, this is no small issue. Informal settlements are complex and our efforts to understand them should reflect this complexity. Informal settlements are not a monolith.

Source: The Guardian April 12, 2023 21:47 UTC