Faulty Data on the Number of Humans Living in Urban Slums

In a recent project at the Online Think Tank we noted that there were several sources for the number of people living in urban slums, each one from a respected body of researches, unfortunately they were all different from one another. This makes planning for 10 Billion people on Earth by 2075 rather difficult.

When our Online Think Tank did our study, rather than quoting any specific number we averaged all the numbers we could find and used that number as the basis for our argument. So where can you get the right or exact number? Well the percentage of the Earth's human population, which lives in Urban Slums, is not an easy figure to attain and the number we used came from several sources, but all the numbers conflicted instead of picking one, the highest one, we averaged them.

The UN Habitat study shows less than the highest number by nearly half that amount, a very big gap. Many of the Slum research papers in India, Brazil, etc. show numbers near it. One thing that is interesting is what "WE" in the US call a slum is "regular" for other people and in the Third World our slum dwellers live like extended royalty family?

There are not only huge gaps in perception but in the statistics as well. The Urban Slums "real slums" the world considers is about 1 Billion people, which is slightly less than 1/6 the human population, but from what we consider slums in the first world, the number is more like 2 Billion. Of course, people in Houston consider the Eastside of Houston as slums, as it is indeed nothing compared to the rest of the place, but by Mexico Standards it is very nice housing.

Worse by 2050 to 2075 the consensus now seems to be 10.75 Billion humans and 30-40% living in giant city like slums. I thought that the depiction in the latest Futuristic UAV Movie was about right, this is what they are predicting, meaning over 3-4 billion people; too many.

What is interesting is that when Americans go travel they come back and say that "They" live in slums, indeed compared to a Middle Class housing tract, of course they call the East Side of Memphis a slum, Detroit a slum, Compton CA a slum. Most of the low income housing or "projects" in the US are called slums, but those would be considered solid habitats for most places on Earth, so perhaps this is worthy of more discussion.

L. Winslow is an Economic Advisor to the Online Think Tank, a Futurist and retired entrepreneur http://www.worldthinktank.net . Currently he is planning a bicycle ride across the US to raise money for charity and is sponsored by http://www.Calling-Plans.com and all the proceeds will go to various charities who sign up.

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