Practising the Street-led Citywide Slum Upgrading Approach

This training event draws on previous and ongoing projects and accumulated knowledge and experience with citywide slum upgrading. It promotes a paradigm shift. UN-Habitat was ahead of its time when launched the trilogy on street-led citywide slum upgrading . With practical examples from across cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the trilogy was comprised by 3 pillars: (1) the strategy focusing on the urban transformation of slums through street-led upgrading approaches, (2) the practical guide to design and implement the citywide slum upgrading programme and bring the approach to citywide scale; and (3)the training companion designed to strengthen the capacities of professionals and institutions alike. The approach was piloted by the IFHP-International Federation of Housing and Planning in a workshop in London with the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) held in London for young urban planning professionals from different countries and also by IHS-Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies through its international training programmes. The street-led approach to slum upgrading is innovative because it moves away from piecemeal interventions without long-term strategic development vision. It was implemented in various modalities and approaches across many cities. These interventions demonstrated the (1) importance of the area-based plan that provided a development perspective for the slums to be transformed and regularized; (2) it highlighted the street-led strategy that helped to connect the slums and informal settlements with the formal city grid, citywide infrastructure and urban management systems of the cities; and it showed the fundamental role of (3) the community-based participatory process and action plan. In WUF 13, IFHP and partners will offer a unique and compact training event structured in an interactive workshop format. The training unpacks the challenges of slums and informal urbanization with a rich set of illustrations from various countries. Lessons learned from 50 years of slum upgrading practices create the ground to unpack the step-per-step approach to design and implement a street-led citywide slum upgrading. This will be supported by methods, tools and a practical exercise.