Urban Slums: A Millennium Development Success?

When the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, the urban slum population was 767 million. Today, it's estimated that this figure has increased in absolute terms to 828 million in the last decade. My laptop calculator tells me this is 61 million additional slum dwellers.

In other news, the Millennium Development slum target has been achieved. Exceeded, actually, 10 years ahead of schedule.

Did I lose you with that one?

The United Nations Human Settlement Program, UN-HABITAT, released its newest State of the World’s Cities report at the fifth session of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro in March, which I was fortunate to attend. This report contains an honest assessment of the progress in reducing the urban divide: the Millennium target was exceeded by at least 2.2 times, 10 years ahead of schedule. Yet existing efforts “are neither satisfactory nor adequate.” That's honest, but it's a little confusing. Going twice the distance in half the time is generally a good thing, right?

First, let’s put the “Cities Without Slums” target (a.k.a. Target 11, or Target 4 of Goal 7) in perspective. Unlike what the name implies, this is not a zero-slum game. The target is “significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.” In 2001, there were an estimated 924 million urban slum dwellers in the world — almost one third of the total urban population.

Quick, do the math. 100 out of 924. Got it? Now let’s rewrite the “Cities Without Slums” target to better reflect the challenge: Decimate the number of urban slum dwellers, and by that we literally mean cut the rate by approximately one-tenth. Let's aim to get this done by 2020, 5 years later than most MDG deadlines.

Compare this to the loftier goals set forth by Target 11's better-known siblings:

1. Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
2. Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.
3. Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
4. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.

“Children everywhere?” “Universal access?” 2010 and 2015? What happened when it came time to write Target 11 of 18? Was everyone just too tired after drafting Target 2, “Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people?”

Was 100 million over 20 years ever really a challenge? Was it even the right metric? UN-HABITAT acknowledges that this target may have been low and "somehow poorly defined," but suggests that it was "welcome at the time" because the issue of slums did not have a high profile. This is probably true. UN-HABITAT published the first comprehensive report on slums in 2003, The Challenge of Slums.

As the current report indicates, however, the target should not have been defined in absolute terms. Unlike many of the other Millennium targets, the "Cities Without Slums" target was set at a fixed number (i.e., 100 million) for the whole world, not as a proportion (e.g., Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate). This absolute benchmark made it "difficult, if not outright impossible" for governments to set country-specific targets for slum reduction.

Yet for all of its shortcomings, is there a lesson in the case of the 'successful' "Cities Without Slums" target? UN-HABITAT frames it as "low and easily achievable," but symbolic. That is, this result shows that progress in reducing urban poverty is possible.

What makes for a good Millenium Development Goal? More generally, what is development 'success'? Is it better to set the bar high and come up far short (think gender parity in school enrollment)? Or is it better to set a 'safe' target and blow it out of the water? Maybe we need a few Target 11's to fill the MDG love tank that is running low on account of a few other, loftier targets.

Figure. 5-Year Growth Rates of Urban and Urban Slum Populations and the Proportion of the Urban Population Living in Slums in Developing Regions between 1990 and 2010. As shown in this figure, in addition to the 5-year urban and urban slum growth rates, the proportion of urban slum dwellers has been declining since at least 1990 in developing regions, 10 years before the MDGs were adopted (Credit: Green, created from data in the UN-HABITAT's State of the World's Cities 2010/2011 report).

Photo Credit: Eric Green