Publication: Slum Real Estate: The Low-Quality High-Price Puzzle in Nairobi's Slum Rental Market and Its Implications for Theory and Practice
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Published
2008
ISSN
0305750X
Date
2012-03-30
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This study of 1,755 households in Nairobi's slums challenges the conventional belief that slums offer low-quality, low-cost shelter to a population that cannot afford better standards. In Nairobi, slums provide low-quality but high-cost shelter. Although slum residents pay millions of dollars in rents annually, and better quality units command higher rents, very little is being re-invested to upgrade quality. To resolve the challenge that the Nairobi puzzle poses for theory and practice, we develop a new analytical framework for understanding quality of living conditions. Improving conditions in Nairobi's slums requires, we argue, two simultaneous interventions: alteration of the tenure mix to enhance owner occupancy and infrastructure investment.
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Publication Inside Informality : The Links between Poverty, Microenterprises, and Living Conditions in Nairobi's Slums(2010)Using households rather than enterprises as the analytical unit, this study of 1,755 households in Nairobi's slums reveals that informal household microenterprises are indeed helping offset poverty. Microenterprises are helping households that are, a priori, more likely to be poor. Better microenterprise performance is associated with certain "business-related" factors, such as sales area, time in, and sector of operation. But "living conditions"--residential tenure and infrastructure access--also strongly influence both creation and success of microenterprises. Interventions that improve infrastructure and reduce tenure insecurity and rent-induced pressures to move may be crucial for incubating microenterprises and reinforcing their contribution to poverty alleviation in Nairobi's slums.Publication Poverty, Living Conditions, and Infrastructure Access : A Comparison of Slums in Dakar, Johannesburg, and Nairobi(2010-07-01)In this paper the authors compare indicators of development, infrastructure, and living conditions in the slums of Dakar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg using data from 2004 World Bank surveys. Contrary to the notion that most African cities face similar slum problems, find that slums in the three cities differ dramatically from each other on nearly every indicator examined. Particularly striking is the weak correlation of measures of income and human capital with infrastructure access and quality of living conditions. For example, residents of Dakar's slums have low levels of education and high levels of poverty but fairly decent living conditions. By contrast, most of Nairobi's slum residents have jobs and comparatively high levels of education, but living conditions are but extremely bad . And in Johannesburg, education and unemployment levels are high, but living conditions are not as bad as in Nairobi. These findings suggest that reduction in income poverty and improvements in human development do not automatically translate into improved infrastructure access or living conditions. Since not all slum residents are poor, living conditions also vary within slums depending on poverty status. Compared to their non-poor neighbors, the poorest residents of Nairobi or Dakar are less likely to use water (although connection rates are similar) or have access to basic infrastructure (such as electricity or a mobile phone). Neighborhood location is also a powerful explanatory variable for electricity and water connections, even after controlling for household characteristics and poverty. Finally, tenants are less likely than homeowners to have water and electricity connections.Publication Are They Really Being Served? Assessing Effective Infrastructure Access and Quality in 15 Kenyan Cities(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02)This paper proposes a framework that examines three levels of access to infrastructure -- nominal, effective, and quality-adjusted access. Most conventional indicators measure nominal access --whether a household has physical access to a service in or near the house. By contrast, effective access incorporates functionality and use of service, and quality-adjusted access raises the bar by incorporating quality metrics. The paper illustrates the analytical utility of this conceptual framework by deploying data from a survey of 14,200 households in 15 Kenyan cities in 2012-13. First, the analysis finds that these cities fall far short of delivering universal access to basic infrastructure. Second, for most services there a large gap -- 3 to 41 percentage points—between nominal and effective access. When the bar is raised to include quality of service, the drop-off in the proportion of those with access is even more dramatic. These findings suggest that conventional nominal measures overreport the level of service in urban communities, and that current approaches to infrastructure delivery might be enhancing availability of a service without ensuring that the service is usable -- that is, functional, reliable and affordable. Third, there is an infrastructure access gap between nonpoor and poor households, as well as formal and informal settlements. Fourth, hedonic regression analysis reveals that four services -- electricity, water, toilets, and garbage collection—are associated with higher rents. The analysis has broader implications for understanding and measuring service access. It raises important questions as global discussions turn to indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals.Publication Water for the Urban Poor : Water Markets, Household Demand, and Service Preferences in Kenya(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-01)Access to safe water supply has been one of the top priorities in developing countries over the past three to four decades, and billions of dollars have been invested in pursuit of the goal of universal service. And yet the general consensus at the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development was that the current reality-as well as the situation expected in the near future-are far from that goal (The Economist Sept. 7-13, 2002). In fact, recent reports emphasize that the world is facing a serious water crisis and that water access and service delivery in the developing world need to be improved dramatically and urgently, especially if we are to make gains in the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease (United Nations 2003). World leaders not only agree that water is an important part of the core development agenda but have also committed to ambitious targets for expanding access to water services. At the U.N. Millennium Summit in 2000 and subsequently at the Johannesburg Earth Summit in 2002, world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound and measurable development targets-widely known as the Millennium Development Goals for 2015-which include a commitment to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.Publication The Living Conditions Diamond: An Analytical and Theoretical Framework for Understanding Slums(2010)What constitutes a 'slum' is much debated in the urban poverty and affordable housing literature. We argue that a focus on living conditions can help clarify this and present a framework, the living conditions diamond, for detailing living conditions and determining how the settlements we deem 'slums' compare with each other and with nonslum settlements. The diamond distills living conditions into four dimensions: (i) tenure, (ii) infrastructure, (iii) unit quality, and (iv) neighbourhood and location. This framework depicts conditions in graphic terms enabling comparison of conditions within and across cities. The diamond moves us beyond the notion that slums are homogeneously poor in quality, and facilitates analyses that can reveal why they differ. Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya and Dakar, Senegal are compared.
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