Cité Soleil
Cité Soleil is an extremely poor and densely populated community located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew
to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty. The area is generally regarded as one of the poorest and
most dangerous areas of the Western Hemisphere and it is one of the biggest slums in the Northern Hemisphere. The area has virtually no sewers and has a
Payatas
poorly maintained open canal system that serves as its sewage system, few large businesses but many local commercial activities and enterprises, irregular but largely free electricity, a few hospitals, and a single government school, Lycee Nationale de Cite Soleil. For several years until 2007, the area was ruled by a number of gangs, each controlling their own sectors. Half of the houses of Cité Soleil are made of cement with a metal roof, half are made completely of scavenged material. An estimated 60 to 70% of houses have no access to a toilet, particularly in the marshy Brooklyn area which includes Cité Carton.
Armed gangs roamed the streets and terrorized the neighborhood. Every few blocks was controlled by one of more than 30 armed factions.Though the gangs no longer rule, murder, rape, kidnapping, looting, and shootings are still common. The area has been called a "microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, unsanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence".
After the devastating 2010 earthquake, it took nearly two weeks for relief
aid to arrive in Cité-Soleil.
Payatas is a barangay located in the 2nd district of Quezon
City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Nearby barangays are
Commonwealth,
Batasan Hills and Bagong Silangan. In the 1970's, the area was a ravine that was surrounded by farming villages and rice paddies. However at the present, Payatas houses a 50 acre landfill which earns it the name "second Smokey Mountain". On July 11, 2000, a landslide of junk killed 218 people living on the dumpsite and caused 300 missing people, though many first hand accounts note that the number is far greater and much closer to 1,000. Payatas dumpsite is still the largest open dumpsite in the Philippines and was reopened only months after the 2000 disaster at the request of scavengers and other residents of the area who depend on it for their livelihood. There has been some good progress at the dumpsite since the landslide of 2000, as the dumpsite has been resloped to a 40 degree angle from its original 70 degree angle while children under the age of 14 have been banned from the dumpsite and methane extractors remove the methane and convert it into electricity, preventing the spontaneous fires which used to characterise it. Payatas remains a very poor area, though, and several foundations operate in Payatas to help improve the opportunities
of residents, notably including the Fairplay For All Foundation. FFA have a
football team known as Payatas FC who have been very successful and aim to
show what the people in the area can achieve when given the opportunity.
To date one of the players has been called up for the U14 National
girls'
team while their various teams have won 8
tournaments.
Trench Town
Trench Town is a neighbourhood located in the parish of St. Andrew which shares municipality (a city or town that has corporate status and local government) with Kingston, the capital and largest city of Jamaica.
In the 1960s Trench Town was known as the Hollywood of Jamaica. Today Trench Town boasts the Trench Town Culture Yard Museum, a visitor friendly National Heritage Site presenting the unique history and contribution of Trench Town to Jamaica. Trench Town is the birthplace of rock steady and reggae music, as well as the home of reggae and Rastafari ambassador Bob Marley. The neighbourhood gets its name from its previous designation as Trench Pen,
400 acres of land once used for livestock by Daniel Power Trench. The Trench family abandoned the land in the late 19th century. It is a common misconception that the name comes from the large open storm-water drain that runs through the neighbourhood in the middle of Collie Smith Drive. Trench Town today is also the home of two of Jamaica's top Premier League football club teams, Arnette Gardens and Boys' Town.
Kibera
Kibera is a neighbourhood of the city of Nairobi, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the city centre. Kibera is the largest slum in Nairobi, and the largest urban slum in Africa. The 2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census reports Kibera's population as 170,070. The neighbourhood is divided into a number of villages, including Kianda, Soweto East, Gatwekera, Kisumu Ndogo, Lindi, Laini Saba, Siranga, Makina and Mashimoni. Conditions in Kibera are extremely poor, and most of its residents lack access to basic services, including electricity and running water. Kibera is one of the most studied slums in Africa. It is undergoing an intensive slum upgrading process. There are three main areas needed to improve within Kibera. The first is the rate crime. Building materials cannot be left unattended for long at any time because there is a very high chance of them being stolen. It is common for people to have to camp on top of their homes until repairs can be made, to protect the raw materials from thieves. The second is the lack of building foundations. The ground in much of Kibera is literally composed of refuse and rubbish. Therefore many structures collapse whenever the slum experiences flooding, which it does regularly. The third factor is the cramped area. Few houses have vehicle access, and many are at the bottoms of steep inclines (which heightens the flooding risk). This means that any construction efforts are made more difficult and costly by the fact that all materials must be brought in by hand.