Most of the inhabitants of Russia believe that slums are shabby wooden huts, in which, as a rule, there is no sewage and water supply. Residents of Africa would accept such living conditions as paradise on earth. They have to live in real slums that have nothing to do with Russian houses. Read this material to verify this and find out the true meaning of the word. You may be struck by living conditions in some countries!
The meaning of the word "slum." Short description
A slum is a housing estate consisting of dilapidated, poorly maintained and poor-quality housing. Most often occurs spontaneously, near the city or in its boundaries. Appears due to the active resettlement of rural residents in large settlements. Residents of such slums generally represent a marginalized social environment. Often, a high density of buildings leads to fires that destroy several or even all buildings in the neighborhood at once.
Slums in Russia
You can find dilapidated houses of the old construction even in the capital. The Russians used to call slums dormitories, which had long been time for demolition. Typically, such buildings have not been overhauled for many years. Ceilings leak, sewage does not work and sometimes there is no water supply. Old houses of the barracks type suffer the same problems. As a rule, they are wooden and people live in them for several generations. There are also entire neighborhoods in cities where private houses of a rather deplorable kind stand. They, too, are ranked as slums and are trying to quickly demolish, so as not to spoil the overall picture. But all these dwellings can not be compared to those spontaneous settlements in other parts of the world where such buildings cause the death of thousands of people!
India
Indian slums are hell for a normal person whose social status allows him to take a shower at least once a week. These buildings appeared thanks to the British. Colonizing India, pious British began to build their homes and oust the indigenous people from the main streets. Those, in turn, had no choice but to build temporary shelters. If the British built their dwellings of stone and carried water in them, then the Indians took any material for their slums and sculpted their huts one on top of the other. Unsanitary conditions and stench quickly filled the streets of this makeshift town. As a result, an outbreak of bubonic plague. It claimed the lives of half the population of the city of Mumbai and the slums quickly carried out of the city. After several major fires, the Indians began to build their houses from old brick, but this did not solve a part of their problems. There is still one toilet for a thousand families, but there is still no water supply. You may be surprised, but not only the poor live there. People who come to work in India, which is actively developing in many sectors, prefer to live in slums. You can rent a house there for only $ 3 per month. And this is a huge savings for a person who decided to accumulate a certain amount of money! The population of these slums is more than a million people.
Makoko
If you have never been to Venice, but want to live in such a place, then you will like the slums in Makoko. These small stilt houses stand right in the water and give shelter to hundreds of thousands of people. Rent will cost $ 10-20 per month. Such a floating town in the lagoon of the Atlantic Ocean could even be called a romantic place, if not for some unpleasant facts. Only a few toilets per huge population forced people to flush all sewage directly into the ocean. It is not difficult to guess which “aromas” are in the air here. That's what a slum means!
Hong Kong
These slums have already gone down in history, but their memory will remain for many decades. The following story may seem fiction and amaze. In a small area there were several dozen high-rise buildings. The photograph shows that between them there was practically no minimum distance. 50 thousand people lived here! The houses located in the center have lived in darkness for decades. The sun did not make its way through the densely built-up area. But this is not the most surprising. People lived in these small apartments for generations, and when in 1994 it was decided to demolish this "anthill", the inhabitants raised a real howl. Although they were offered normal apartments in good neighborhoods - they did not want to leave their homes. No less terrible fact of life in Hong Kong were the so-called "hotels". In simple apartments, people put cages for dogs and handed them for decent money - $ 100-200 a month. After the scandal in the press, the cells had to be abandoned, but instead, boxes of 1-2 square meters in size began to give up.
