1.
Urban renewal
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Urban renewal, which is generally called urban regeneration, revitalization in the United States, is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures and its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of reconstruction. The process has had a impact on many urban landscapes. This process is carried out in rural areas, referred to as village renewal. In some cases, renewal may result in urban sprawl and less congestion when areas of cities receive freeways and expressways, Urban renewal has been seen by proponents as an economic engine and a reform mechanism, and by critics as a mechanism for control. It may enhance existing communities, and in some cases result in the demolition of neighborhoods, many cities link the revitalization of the central business district and gentrification of residential neighborhoods to earlier urban renewal programs. The agenda that emerged was a doctrine that assumed better housing conditions would reform its residents morally and economically. The first area to be targeted was the notorious slum called the Devils Acre near Westminster and this new movement was largely funded by George Peabody and the Peabody Trust and had a lasting impact on the urban character of Westminster. Slum clearance began with the Rochester Buildings, on the corner of Old Pye Street and Perkins Rent and they are one of the earliest large-scale philanthropic housing developments in London. The Rochester Buildings were sold to the Peabody Trust in 1877, angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts funded an experimental social housing estate, among the first of its kind, on the corner of Columbia Road and Old Pye Street. In 1869 the Peabody Trust built one of its first housing estates at Brewers Green, between Victoria Street and St. Jamess Park. What remained of the Devils Acre on the side of Victoria Street was cleared. In 1882, the Peabody Trust built the Abbey Orchard Estate on former marshland at the corner of Old Pye Street, like many of the social housing estates, the Abbey Orchard Estate was built following the square plan concept. Blocks of flats were built around a courtyard, creating a space within the estate functioning as recreation area. The courtyards were meant to create a community atmosphere and the blocks of flats were designed to allow sunlight into the courtyards, the blocks of flats were built using high-quality brickwork and included architectural features such as lettering, glazing, fixtures and fittings. The estates built in the area at the time were considered model dwellings and included shared laundry and sanitary facilities, innovative at the time, the design was subsequently repeated in numerous other housing estates in London. State intervention was first achieved with the passage of the Public Health Act of 1875 through Parliament, the Act focused on combating filthy urban living conditions that were the cause of disease outbreaks. It required all new construction to include running water and an internal drainage system
2.
Slum
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A slum is a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and squalor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of water, reliable electricity, law enforcement. Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings that because of poor-quality construction or provision of services have deteriorated into slums, Slums were common in the 18th to early 20th centuries in the United States and Europe. More recently slums have been found in urban regions of developing and undeveloped parts of the world. According to UN-Habitat, around 33% of the population in the developing world in 2012, or about 863 million people. Among individual countries, the proportion of residents living in slum areas in 2009 was highest in the Central African Republic. Between 1990 and 2010 the percentage of people living in slums dropped, the worlds largest slum city is in Mexico City. Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons. Some causes include rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, poor planning, politics, natural disasters and social conflicts. It is thought that slum is a British slang word from the East End of London meaning room, Slums were common in the United States and Europe before the early 20th century. Slums are now associated with Victorian Britain, particularly in industrial English towns, lowland Scottish towns. Engels described these British neighborhoods as cattle-sheds for human beings and these were generally still inhabited until the 1940s, when the government started slum clearance and built new council houses. There are still many left of former slum housing in the UK. By the 1920s it had become a slang expression in England, meaning either various taverns and eating houses, loose talk or gypsy language. In Life in London Pierce Egan used the word in the context of the slums of Holy Lane or St Giles. A footnote defined slum to mean low, unfrequent parts of the town, charles Dickens used the word slum in a similar way in 1840, writing I mean to take a great, London, back-slum kind walk tonight. Slum began to be used to describe bad housing soon after and was used as alternative expression for rookeries and this passage was widely quoted in the national press, leading to the popularisation of the word slum to describe bad housing. In France as in most industrialised European capitals, slums were widespread in Paris and other areas in the 19th century
3.
Squatting
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Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential—that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally and he forecasts there will be two billion by 2030 and three billion by 2050. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, Squatting can be related to political movements, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist. It can be a means to conserve buildings or to provide housing, while these settlements may, in time, grow to become both legalised and indistinguishable from normal residential neighbourhoods, they start off as squats with minimal basic infrastructure. Thus, there is no sewage system, drinking water must be bought from vendors or carried from a nearby tap, besides being residences, some squats are used as social centres or host give-away shops, pirate radio stations or cafés. In Spanish-speaking countries, squatters receive several names, such as okupas in Spain, Chile or Argentina, Squatting by necessity is in itself a political issue, therefore also a statement or rather a response to the political system causing it. During the period of recession and increased housing foreclosures in the 2000s, squatting became far more prevalent in Western. In some cases, need-based and politically motivated squatting go hand in hand, conservational – i. e. preserving monuments because the authorities have let them decay Political – e. g. Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner, however, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Anarchist Colin Ward comments, Squatting is the oldest mode of tenure in the world and this is as true of the Queen with her 176,000 acres as it is of the 54 percent of householders in Britain who are owner-occupiers. They are all the recipients of stolen land, for to regard our planet as a commodity offends every conceivable principle of natural rights. U. K. police official Sue Williams, for example, has stated that Squatting is linked to Anti-Social Behaviour and can cause a great deal of nuisance, in some cases there may also be criminal activities involved. The public attitude toward squatting varies, depending on legal aspects, socioeconomic conditions, in particular, while squatting of municipal buildings may be treated leniently, squatting of private property often leads to strong negative reaction on the part of the public and authorities. Adverse possession is a method of acquiring title to property through possession for a period under certain conditions. Countries where this principle exists include England and the United States, however, some non-common law jurisdictions have laws similar to adverse possession. For example, Louisiana has a doctrine called acquisitive prescription. There are large communities in Kenya, such as Kibera in Nairobi. An estimated 1,000 people live in the Grande Hotel Beira in Mozambique, the Zabbaleen settlement and the City of the Dead are both well-known squatter communities in Cairo
4.
Slum upgrading
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The main objective of slum upgrading is to alleviate the poor living standards of slum dwellers. Many slums lack basic local authority services such as provision of drinking water, sanitation, wastewater. Slum upgrading is used mainly for projects inspired by or engaged by the World Bank and it is considered by the proponents a necessary and important component of urban development in the developing countries. However, many people do not believe that slum upgrading is successful and they point to the difficulties in providing the necessary resources either in a way that is beneficial to the slum-dwellers or in a way that has long-term effectiveness. Alternatives to slum upgrading include the construction of tenements for people living in slums or the forced removal of slum dwellers from the land. Many governments have tried to find solutions to the problem, slum upgrading is essentially a strategy in which the infrastructure of a slum is improved, such as giving adequate water supply and sewage to the community. Additionally, because of the legal status of slum inhabitants. The concept of upgrading, a strategy for the improvement in a slums infrastructure, is one that has evolved out of a period of unprecedented urban growth since the mid-20th century. In fact, nearly two thirds of the growth that has occurred in that time period has been in urban areas. Not only have we seen the growth of urban populations a whole, by 2015, the world will likely have 550 cities with a population greater than one million – an increase of 464 cities from 1950. Currently, only one city has a large enough to be considered a hypercity. However, by 2025 Asia alone may have eleven of these cities, the key factor in this has been that the cities that have grown most rapidly have been cities in the developing world. For example, the cities of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Lagos, while much of this growth has come as a result of population explosion, mass migration from rural areas to the cities has accounted for a huge portion of this worldwide urbanization. The great increase in population has had implications in the urban ecology in the developing world. The major effect of this has been the rise of the slums, up until the 1970s, countries took a very hands off approach to the difficulties of third world housing. In essence, there were three solutions taken seriously by the community, subsidized mortgages, prefabrication, and organized self-help. However, people began to recognize housing as a basic need, requiring more invasive measures, in 1972, John F. C. Turner published his book, Freedom to Build, in which he argued for a theoretical strategy to solve the problem of slums. He argued that governments should not try to tackle the problem itself
5.
Operation Murambatsvina
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Operation Murambatsvina, also officially known as Operation Restore Order, is a large-scale Zimbabwean government campaign to forcibly clear slum areas across the country.4 million people. However, the campaign has met with condemnation from Zimbabwean opposition parties, church groups, non-governmental organisations. The word was used to refer to a communal village worker by the Shona who lived in reserves. These people were employed by the ministry of health to improve levels of sanitation in areas, to communicate health information. Police Inspector John Tupiri of Operations Manicaland decided on the name Murambatsvina, the Zimbabwean police were ruthless in executing their duties with the result that they were dreaded by the local populace. The sense behind the word therefore mirrors the purpose of the operation as asserted by the government of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans refer to the operation as Zimbabwes tsunami, in reference to the devastation which followed the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. The crackdown has affected most of the cities in the country. Estimates of the number of people affected vary considerably, the latest United Nations figures estimate that it has led to the unemployment of 700,000 people and affected a further 2.4 million people countrywide. Earlier, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum estimated that 64,677 families had been displaced, however, according to the police only 120,000 people have been affected. Whichever figures are correct, large numbers of people have been affected, all of whom are in need of relief and resettlement following the loss of their homes. The clearances have been condemned both internally and internationally, a report written by Anna Tibaijuka, the Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, was handed to the Zimbabwean government on 21 July 2005. The actions of the government are described as indiscriminate, unjustified and conducted without regard for human suffering, overall responsibility for the clearances rests with the ruling party, ZANU-PF. The previous Chairperson of the Harare Commission, Dr. Jameson Kurasha, Mugabe said the clearances are needed to carry out a vigorous clean-up campaign to restore sanity and he has described the program as an urban renewal campaign. Chombo has described the operation in terms of restoring order, It is these people who have been making the country ungovernable by their criminal activities actually. The Zimbabwean Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, said that Operation Murambatsvina was meant to clean the country of the mass of maggots bent on destroying the economy. While police have carried out most of the demolitions, they have been supported by the army, many inhabitants have been forced to destroy their own homes, sometimes at gunpoint. People whose homes have been demolished are being told to return to the areas or face further action from the Zimbabwe Republic Police
6.
International Standard Serial Number
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An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title, ISSN are used in ordering, cataloging, interlibrary loans, and other practices in connection with serial literature. The ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971, ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC9 is responsible for maintaining the standard. When a serial with the content is published in more than one media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media, the ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN and electronic ISSN, respectively. The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers, as an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits. The last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows, NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character. The ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, for calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, the modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker that can validate an ISSN, ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres, usually located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris. The International Centre is an organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, at the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept, where ISBNs are assigned to individual books, an ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an identifier associated with a serial title. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change, separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. Also, a CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved, however, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial
