Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Urban Crisis: Restructuring Informal Settlements

Description

This lecture discusses the urban crisis in African cities, focusing on the restructuring of informal settlements due to a disruption in the accumulation cycle of exploitation rent from agricultural and mining products. It explores manifestations such as slowing urban projects, public debt crisis, and the imposition of Structural Adjustment Programs by International Financial Institutions, leading to increased exclusion of the poor. The lecture also examines the fragmentation and compartmentalization of spaces into center/periphery, ethnic, and rich/poor neighborhoods.

Official source

Related concepts (4)

Shanty town

A shanty town, squatter area or squatter settlement is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood. A typical shanty town is squatted and in the beginning lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity and street drainage. Over time, shanty towns can develop their infrastructure and even change into middle class neighbourhoods. They can be small informal settlements or they can house millions of people.

Mexican peso crisis

The Mexican peso crisis was a currency crisis sparked by the Mexican government's sudden devaluation of the peso against the U.S. dollar in December 1994, which became one of the first international financial crises ignited by capital flight. During the 1994 presidential election, the incumbent administration embarked on an expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. The Mexican treasury began issuing short-term debt instruments denominated in domestic currency with a guaranteed repayment in U.S.

Economic collapse

Economic collapse, also called economic meltdown, is any of a broad range of bad economic conditions, ranging from a severe, prolonged depression with high bankruptcy rates and high unemployment (such as the Great Depression of the 1930s), to a breakdown in normal commerce caused by hyperinflation (such as in Weimar Germany in the 1920s), or even an economically caused sharp rise in the death rate and perhaps even a decline in population (such as in countries of the former USSR in the 1990s).

Squatting

Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there were one billion slum residents and squatters globally. Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people who are poor and homeless find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below.

Related concepts (4)