Slum clearance is a great concern in urban planning especially in nineteenth century. As population grew, people from rural areas moved to cities in seeking for more working opportunities, better living condition and education for next generation (Habitat, 2007). Those people often lacked skills and were low income people. As a result, they settled in inner city and those settlements were often considered as informal settlements. According to Ooi and Phua (2007), there was expected to be one thirds of the world’s population living slum. To solve the current situation and the land shortage caused by slums, governments and authorities started to clear slums. This paper will analyse both good and bad aspects of slum clearance by using slum clearance in Carlton, Melbourne and the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong as examples.
Since slums are often informal settlement in inner city, they are usually of bad environment. This can be seen in the two example here. Slums in Carlton came after the economic depression in 1890s and were often resulted from land subdivision means the density of population was quite high (Groenhart etc., 2013). The low land value after the depression attracted a great amount of people, including immigrants. However, those housed often lacked basic infrastructures, including safe water supply, sanitation and sewage system (see picture 1). Living condition there was fairly bad. Thus, slums in Carlton was labelled as evil land and must be cleared and destroyed (University of Melbourne, n.d.). Slum clearance in Carlton was supported by Oswald Barnett. It was argued that Barnett’s Christian belief and Methodist background would apply religious elements in slum clearance. Nevertheless, slum clearance did gain great success. Same story happened in the Kowloon Walled City. It was acknowledged as the world’s densest area which used to have 50,000 people and 33,000 families live in that single area. It was an area full of drug peddlers, criminals and prostitutes. There were no water supply for years nor register doctors (Sinn, 1987). The whole area was dirty, dark and crowded (see picture 2). The demolition of it in 1992 ended its legend story and helped it to keep up with the living condition in Hong Kong. It also helped to reduce the crime rate and maintained social justice. Both Carlton’s and Hong Kong’s slum clearance was conducted by the government. They received funding and enforced rehabilitation on slum areas. In the case of Carlton, agencies were authorized to help urban renewal projects (Chapin, 1938). However, involving private agencies in slum clearance projects can easily cause corruption. Property companies may communicate with agencies to clear land for commercial benefits. Slum clearance can to some extent increase income and property value of that land and reduce poverty. It may also benefit the whole city and make the central city more attractive to business and people (Collins & Shester, 2011). But , such action often ignores the emotional attachment of people to the land (Pascoe, 2011). To them, slums are just simply homes where they have lived for a long time and unwilling to move.
Since slums are often informal settlement in inner city, they are usually of bad environment. This can be seen in the two example here. Slums in Carlton came after the economic depression in 1890s and were often resulted from land subdivision means the density of population was quite high (Groenhart etc., 2013). The low land value after the depression attracted a great amount of people, including immigrants. However, those housed often lacked basic infrastructures, including safe water supply, sanitation and sewage system (see picture 1). Living condition there was fairly bad. Thus, slums in Carlton was labelled as evil land and must be cleared and destroyed (University of Melbourne, n.d.). Slum clearance in Carlton was supported by Oswald Barnett. It was argued that Barnett’s Christian belief and Methodist background would apply religious elements in slum clearance. Nevertheless, slum clearance did gain great success. Same story happened in the Kowloon Walled City. It was acknowledged as the world’s densest area which used to have 50,000 people and 33,000 families live in that single area. It was an area full of drug peddlers, criminals and prostitutes. There were no water supply for years nor register doctors (Sinn, 1987). The whole area was dirty, dark and crowded (see picture 2). The demolition of it in 1992 ended its legend story and helped it to keep up with the living condition in Hong Kong. It also helped to reduce the crime rate and maintained social justice. Both Carlton’s and Hong Kong’s slum clearance was conducted by the government. They received funding and enforced rehabilitation on slum areas. In the case of Carlton, agencies were authorized to help urban renewal projects (Chapin, 1938). However, involving private agencies in slum clearance projects can easily cause corruption. Property companies may communicate with agencies to clear land for commercial benefits. Slum clearance can to some extent increase income and property value of that land and reduce poverty. It may also benefit the whole city and make the central city more attractive to business and people (Collins & Shester, 2011). But , such action often ignores the emotional attachment of people to the land (Pascoe, 2011). To them, slums are just simply homes where they have lived for a long time and unwilling to move.
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While slum clearance played an important role on the planning and structure of a city and it may stimulate the economic growth, it has negative effects. Firstly, slums, as parts of a city has their own value that deserve to be protected. Those inner city areas are often areas with long history. Taking Carlton as an example, its architectures had their own characters and historical value. Also, it witnessed the migrant of Jews and Italians (University of Melbourne, n.d.). As those migrants gradually moved out of Carlton as a result of the slum clearance action, the value lost as well. Kowloon Walled City faced the same loss of culture and history. The City was built during the Qing Dynasty. The demolition of the city also destroyed the site of the old city, the former military office, some stone lions and the memories of old residents (Sinn, 1987). These things are worthy preserved as culture heritage. Secondly, slums can also provoke innovation and new ideas. They becomes a springboard to help people go out of poor. Leila Velez, who was the most successful business woman of her time, grew up in a slum. She was less educated but started her own business and became the most successful African-American businessperson (Glaeser, 2011). It may be argued that slums cannot help people move towards prosperity and Leila’s success can be an occasional story. But it is impossible for people to go directly from rural poor areas to middle- class position. In addition, we still see the success of many people who came from slums, for example, the Kennedy family. Finally, slum clearance can bring lots of problems to the city. Since slum clearance often comes with relocation of the people, they are unwilling to move out of the area. A research focused on the experience of relocated people shows that the living condition of those new houses are only slightly better, but people need to share the living room twice or three times more than their former homes as the new houses are often more crowded (Chapin, 1938). While the accuracy of this research need to be doubted since it was only conducted on 198 families, it still shows that the relocation does not totally improve the living condition of slum people. Considering those people who used to live in slums, they may suffer from poverty after the relocation. The new estates are usually more expensive than their slum houses so that they may be unable to pay the rent (Correspondent, 1935). Some may argue that the public housing arranged for relocation are often affordable and can improve their living condition. However, regardless of whether they are affordable or not, they are usually set in the city fringe. This means people living there may need to spend more to get into inner city and since there are more working opportunities in inner city, they have to get there. To solve the problem, governments should subsidise loans the help workers to buy or rent a dwelling in inner city instead relocate them to city fringe (Ministry of Housing and Construction, 1988). This action can give them more chances to find a job of higher paid in city and they can gradually pay the loan and buy homes of their own.
In conclusion, slum clearance were largely conducted in the 19th century as a result of bad living condition and land shortage. While the slum clearance and relocation can to some extent improve people’s lives and stimulate the local development, it ignored the emotional ties of people to the land. Furthermore, it destructs the cultural and heritage value. Finally, the relocation makes it more expensive for people to pay for the rent. However, if only improved the quality of slums, it may attract more people to come to live in that area and it will become worse and goes over its capacity (Glaeser, 2011).Generally, slum clearance is important and essential to a city’s development. However, governments should play an active and positive role in slum clearance. While concerning improving living condition, governments should also protect heritage and culture as well as provide affordable housing close to inner city.
Reference List
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