ACSP 2025 Hayden Shelby

Community-Based Slum Upgrading in Southeast Asia: Precarious Improvements Along Many Dimensions

Hayden Shelby University of Cincinnati

Southeast Asian countries have been at the forefront of community-based settlement upgrading for over 60 years. What have the countries of the region learned from each other, and what can we learn from their experiences as a whole?

Presentation Outline

• The evolution slum upgrading in Southeast Asia
• The logic of the move to empowerment
• Trends in results
• Sources of enduring precarity
• The lessons we keep learning

1969

1988

2010s

1990s

2003

Kampung Improvement Programme INDONESIA

Community Mortgage Program PHILIPPINES

UPP/P2KP, CKIP and other regional programs INDONESIA

Baan Mankong THAILAND

Baan Mankong expands, CMP declines, Indonesia implements Kotaku (and many others)

Programmatic Trends Across Time

Greater Community Participation

Microfinance

Focus on Tenure

Physical Upgrading

The logic of multidimensional upgrading

• Community involvement ensures appropriate investments and some level of assistance with mainenance
• Tenure security provides an incentive for household investment
• Microfinance mandates investment and provides cost recovery
• Networking allows for learning and political mobilization

But..the public and academic response

Thailand

Philippines

Indonesia

Baan Mankong: going to scale with 'slum' and squatter upgrading in Thailand (Somsook Boonyabancha 2009)

KIP: Aga Khan Foundation Award 1983 World Habitat Award 1992

Celebration

The Community Mortgage Program: An almost successful alternative for some urban poor (Lee 1995)

Empowerment or Responsibility? Collective Finance for Slum Upgrading in Thailand (Shelby 2021)

CKIP: Autonomous but Constrained: CBOs and urban upgrading in Indonesia (Das 2015)

Questioning

Poverty Alleviation and the Eviction of the Poorest: Towards Urban Land Reform in the Philippines (Berner 2000)

KIP: The Slum Uprgrading Myth (Werlin 1999)

"participatory dispossession" (Elinoff 2021 p.26)

Criticism

Trends in results

• Some outstanding case studies exist in all countries, but outcomes vary greatly
• Community building processes are political, and people get left out, even though mechanisms for inclusion have improved over time
• Reconciling the rationalities of survival with the rationalities of government (Watson 2009) results in a complex bureaucratization of community
• Multidimensional upgrading involves a large number of stakeholders, and coordination is difficult

Sources of Enduring Precarity

• Those who do not participate can be left more precarious than before

• The processes themselves are precarious

• Having strong, capable leaders is somewhat a matter of luck

• Empowerment and responsibility are two sides of the same coin

Conclusion

Housing can be a site of empowerment for some people, but should empowering oneself be a prerequisite for achieving stable housing?

Thank you!

shelbyhm@uc.edu