Why Urban COVID-19 Recovery Needs to Focus on Reforming Informal Settlements

Kadambari Shah is a Research Associate at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. She holds a Masters in International Development and Policy from the Harris School of Public Policy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed numerous flaws in our world. At the city level, previously unknown or largely ignored structural issues in urban planning and governance are now acutely visible. One of these pressing challenges, particularly in developing countries, is informal housing.

Today, over 55% of the global population lives in cities; by 2050, this figure is estimated to reach 68%. Cities, owing to their population density, are particularly susceptible to the spread of contagions like COVID-19. Naturally, the pandemic has sparked debate on our urban future. During the early days of the crisis in March 2020, some researchers suggested that population-dense cities were to blame for the virus’s quick spread. They claimed that as people fled metropolitan regions to protect themselves from infection, the resultant decrease in population density would benefit urban areas. Others asserted that cities, possessing an innate resilience, would bounce back like they have after past epidemics, such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or periodic cholera outbreaks. Today, nearly two years into the pandemic, the latter claim seems to be vindicated: urban life is slowly finding a new rhythm. Yet, the structural concerns that were unearthed remain.

It has become clear that density is not necessarily the problem; rather, city management and governance is. For instance, compare teeming New York City (NYC) to the even more teeming Seoul or Taipei. At the time of writing this piece, NYC, with a population density of over 27,000 residents per square mile, has over 2 million COVID-19 cases. Meanwhile Seoul and Taipei, with population densities of over 43,000 and 39,000 residents per square mile, have a mere fraction of those cases, despite sporadic waves of infection. Moreover, there is, as urban studies theorist Richard Florida points out, a tenuous but important distinction between overcrowding and density. This dichotomy is glaringly apparent in the sphere of informal housing, which has recently gained traction as cities worldwide reopen.

Migration to urban areas for employment and other opportunities is a global phenomenon. New York University urbanist Alain Bertaud states that cities are primarily “labor markets.” However, with housing supply growing increasingly scarce and expensive, these job seekers are forced to live in informal settlements with poor living conditions. These settlements may be long distances away from jobs in the city core and are often underserved by public transport. Across the world, over 1 billion people inhabit informal housing, such as in Brazil’s favelas, India’s slums, and Africa’s shantytowns.

Prior to the pandemic, overcrowding created infrastructure crunches and shortages in public service delivery. In times of public health emergencies, these weaknesses are compounded. If 10 people share a single room or 200 people a single toilet, like in Mumbai’s Dharavi (Asia’s largest slum), physical distancing becomes nearly impossible. When piped water either doesn’t exist or is only available in limited quantities/at certain times of the day, like in Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha favela, trade-offs need to be made between using water for increased hand washing or for daily activities like cooking. Inevitably, informal settlements became “incubators of disease.” To date, over half of Mumbai’s almost 9 million slum residents have been exposed to the virus. A 2020 study by Patranabis et al. found that containment zones, e.g., demarcated neighborhoods, streets, or colonies with high numbers of infection with temporarily restricted movement, were mostly located in and around slums.

Today, in 2022, this picture is somewhat different: whether through active policy interventions (such as testing and isolation protocols) or with dwellers taking matters into their own hands (such as gang-imposed curfews or community awareness campaigns), informal settlements like Dharavi, Rochina, and Kenya’s Kibera have virtually contained the virus. At the same time, however, those living in slums are still experiencing many of the pandemic’s indirect consequences. For example, unsanitary environments foster hotspots of disease other than COVID-19, such HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. With the focus concentrated on the novel coronavirus, these historically neglected illnesses are currently largely overlooked, thereby exacerbating their prevalence and severity. Further, millions of slum inhabitants, permanently or temporarily out of work, were forced to deplete their savings for scarce supplies. Hence, the health crisis is inseparable from its economic counterpart.

In an ideal world, informal settlements would not exist. However, policies to curtail their expansion have consistently failed: slums continue growing, with serious impacts for their residents’ ease of living. The pandemic impels us to consider extensive housing reform. First, it is important to improve service delivery in slums, be it through durable water connections or effective sanitation and solid waste management systems. In fact, more public goods provision can also tackle public health concerns. With the necessary infrastructure, disease outbreaks will likely stop on their own. Second, policymakers must engage in slum upgrades, increasing per-capita consumption of floor space and targeting the crowding problem. Third, governments need to make cities more migrant-friendly and support informal sector workers and daily wage earners. Providing social safety nets to dwellers can not only help ensure inclusive access to urban amenities, but also spur economic growth. Fourth, easing regulatory barriers to construction can encourage private players to create affordable housing, thereby limiting slum proliferation. Finally, more broadly, it is imperative to invest in state capacity and better prepare cities for the next crisis. For example, empowering city mayors in India and correcting geographic imbalances in Africa can aid the state in building resilience.

Informal settlements are not the only urban policy challenge revealed by COVID-19. For instance, air pollution alone kills 7 million people per year. In the lockdowns of 2020, with most cars off the road, cities across the globe saw the return of blue skies and other aspects of a thriving environment. Maintaining clean air can have wide-ranging benefits from improved health outcomes to more productive economies. Similar arguments can be made for reimagining public transport, local institutions, and other factors that shape the urban fabric.

Urbanization will continue to play a pivotal role in the growth story of the 21st century. Without proper housing basics, cities can’t optimally perform their functions as ‘engines of growth’ and ‘poverty digesters.’ As we move into the post-peak period of the pandemic, reform is urgent; addressing informal settlements will combat existing socio-economic and health problems, provide residents with an enhanced quality of life, and better prepare us all for the next pandemic.