Slums currently house one-third of the world’s population, reports the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). By 2030, 2 billion people will be living in slums unless substantial policy changes occur. Asia accounts for some 60% of the world’s urban slum dwellers. As of 2001, South central Asia had the largest slum population in the world, with 262 million slum dwellers or 58% of the region’s total urban population. Human Settlements 2003 by UN-HABITAT. The immigrant urban poor have largely moved from the countryside to the cities voluntarily, in order to exploit actual or perceived economic opportunities. Opportunities manifest in part due to the growing urban informal sector, which is most spectacularly visible in the many growing and large-scale informal and squatter settlements in urban centers. The rapidity and enormous volume of this rural-to-urban migration intensifies slum formation. City planning and management systems are unable to adequately cope with the massive population influx.
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