Slum Exhibit Addresses Housing in Developing World
FrontLines - December-January 2009-10
By Chris Ward
Peering into the tiny shack in Jakarta that the Asana family calls home, New Jersey
native Sivan Yosef was amazed at what she saw.
“Even though I’d visited slums before while working overseas,
I’d never seen the inside of someone’s home, and the first thing that
struck me was the extremely low ceiling, which made standing up
impossible,” she said. “I thought, ‘how can they live here?’”
“But when I heard the family talk about their lives and saw how
carefully they had decorated the room with things they’d found, it
gave me a better perspective on their lives—the good and the bad,”
Yosef said.
Yosef’s newfound insight into life in the world’s fastest-growing
human habitat— slums—came during an afternoon visit to a multimedia
exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
The exhibit, called “The Places We Live,” presents a collection of
photos and audio testimonials from men, women, and children living
in the slums of Caracas, Mumbai, Jakarta, and Nairobi.
Created by Magnum Photos photographer Jonas Bendiksen, the
4,500 square foot installation invites visitors into the living rooms of
ordinary slum residents, providing a rare—and nuanced—glimpse of
people and places seldom seen by those who live in developed
countries.
“‘The Places We Live’ was not a search for…the absolute
extremes of urban poverty—I wasn’t looking for the dirtiest spot, the
poorest hovels, or the most crime-ridden street corner. My task was
to find how people normalize these dire situations. How they build
dignity and daily lives in the midst of very challenging…conditions,”
said Bendiksen.
USAID, Cities Alliance, and the World Bank brought the exhibit
to Washington in October, timed to coincide with World Habitat Day,
which was also hosted in the U.S. capital this fall.
The exhibit is designed to increase awareness of the world’s
nearly 1 billion slum dwellers. Officials believe that understanding is
crucial for the international community to tackle the urbanization
and slum growth currently buffeting many poor nations in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America.
The exhibit is the first in a series of activities by USAID and its
partners to highlight urban issues over the coming months. These
include an academic paper competition on slums aimed at PhD
students in urban development fields; an urban speaker series hosted
at Agency headquarters; and the World Urban Forum 5, scheduled
for March 2010 in Rio de Janeiro.
★
LOS RANCHOS. Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas, is located in a valley with office buildings and upscale residential areas located near the bottom. Poor neighborhoods,
known as ranchos, are built into the hillsides surrounding the city. The population of Caracas has more than quadrupled in the last 50 years, fueled in part by an oil boom,
but more than 50 percent of city dwellers live in ranchos. Many residents lack basic services such as sewage and electricity.
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