Maybe so in industrialized countries too.
Example:
Making The World Safe For Warehousing: An Urban Paradise, South Central
Farm, Is Plowed Under
http://leighm.net/blog/2006/06/17/scffrwrhs_altnt/
SLUM DWELLERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES MAY BE WORSE OFF THAN IN RURAL
AREAS: UN REPORT
With the world’s urban population set to exceed rural dwellers for the
first time next year, slum dwellers are as badly if not worse off than
their rural cousins in terms of health, literacy and prosperity,
contradicting general assumptions, according to a landmark study issued
today by the United Nations.
“This report provides concrete evidence that there are two cities within
one city – one part of the urban population that has all the benefits of
urban living, and the other part, the slums and squatter settlements,
where the poor often live under worse conditions than their rural
relatives,” said Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT
that produced the State of the World’s Cities Report 2006/7.
“It is time that donor agencies and national governments recognized the
urban penalty and specifically targeted additional resources to improve
the living conditions of slum dwellers,” she added, referring to a
global population of one billion.
The report shows remarkable similarities between slums and rural areas
in health, education, employment and mortality, the Agency said in a
news release, adding that it also shows how in countries such as
Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti and India, child malnutrition in slums is
comparable to that of rural areas.
For example, in Ethiopia, child malnutrition in slums and rural areas is
47 per cent and 49 per cent respectively, compared with 27 per cent in
non-slum urban areas, while in Brazil and Côte d’Ivoire, child
malnutrition is three to four times higher in slums than in non slum-areas.
The report also debunks some commonly-held beliefs about people living
in slums, including the fact that contrary to popular perception, young
adults living in slums are more likely to have a child, be married or
head a household than their counterparts living in non-slum areas.
The findings come at a time when the world is entering an “historic
urban transition,” the Agency says, noting that in 2007 – for the first
time in history – the world’s urban population will exceed the rural
population. Most of the world’s urban growth – 95 per cent – in the next
two decades will be absorbed by cities of the developing world, which
are least equipped to deal with rapid urbanization.
Globally, the slum population is set to grow at the rate of 27 million
per year in the period 2000-2020 however, UN-HABITAT, which is the
agency that aims to achieve sustainable development of human
settlements, says in the report that slum formation is “neither
inevitable nor acceptable.”
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