Financing Slum Upgrading: Lessons from Experience

The successful growth of Cities and Metropolitan areas is closely linked to addressing the issue of slums. First is the need to integrate present-day slums into the urban fabric by ensuring economic, physical, environmental and social connectivity with the city. Second there is a need to manage future growth enabling low income people to enter and inhabit the city -- without having to endure hardship of slum life for multiple generations. In some metropolitan areas the present-day and future challenges of inclusive growth represent the greatest challenge and possibly is the single largest financing requirement of emerging cities. The "urban growth now and then fix later" attitude that has made rapid urban expansion possible is a failed approach which has led to undue human misery - in addition it is also bad business. It is widely accepted that retrofitting slums will cost every stakeholder in society from three to seven times as much than if the city had grown in an inclusive way. In addition, the complexity of addressing the slum problem not only increases in financial requirements but also in political complexity. This session will consider the financing options for slum upgrading in the context of city and metropolitan finance.