why slum tourism is bad

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Inside the Controversial World of Slum Tourism

People have toured the world’s most marginalized, impoverished districts for over a century.

Hundreds of shanty towns line the riverbanks, train tracks, and garbage dumps in the Filipino capital—the most jammed-packed areas in one of the world’s most densely populated cities. Around a quarter of its 12 million people are considered “informal settlers.”

Manila is starkly representative of a global problem. According to the United Nations , about a quarter of the world’s urban population lives in slums—and this figure is rising fast.

Rich cultural heritage brings visitors to Manila, but some feel compelled to leave the safety of the historic center sites to get a glimpse of the city’s inequality. Tour operators in the Philippines —as well as places like Brazil and India —have responded by offering “slum tours” that take outsiders through their most impoverished, marginalized districts.

Slum tourism sparks considerable debate around an uncomfortable moral dilemma. No matter what you call it—slum tours, reality tours, adventure tourism, poverty tourism—many consider the practice little more than slack-jawed privileged people gawking at those less fortunate. Others argue they raise awareness and provide numerous examples of giving back to the local communities. Should tourists simply keep their eyes shut?

Around a quarter of Manila's 12 million people are considered “informal settlers."

Rich cultural heritage brings visitors to Manila, but some feel compelled to leave the safety of the historic center sites to get a glimpse of the city’s inequality.

Slumming For Centuries

Slum tourism is not a new phenomenon, although much has changed since its beginning. “Slumming” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1860s, meaning “to go into, or frequent, slums for discreditable purposes; to saunter about, with a suspicion, perhaps, of immoral pursuits.” In September 1884, the New York Times published an article about the latest trend in leisure activities that arrived from across the pond, “‘Slumming’ will become a form of fashionable dissipation this winter among our Belles, as our foreign cousins will always be ready to lead the way.”

Usually under the pretense of charity and sometimes with a police escort, rich Londoners began braving the city’s ill-reputed East End beginning around 1840. This new form of amusement arrived to New York City from wealthy British tourists eager to compare slums abroad to those back home. Spreading across the coast to San Francisco, the practice creeped into city guide books. Groups wandered through neighborhoods like the Bowery or Five Points in New York to peer into brothels, saloons, and opium dens.

Visitors could hardly believe their eyes, and justifiably so. “I don’t think an opium den would have welcomed, or allowed access to, slummers to come through if they weren’t there to smoke themselves,” Chad Heap writes in his book Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife , 1885–1940 . Recognizing the business opportunity, outsiders cashed in on the curiosity by hiring actors to play the part of addicts or gang members to stage shoot-’em-ups in the streets. After all, no one wanted the slum tourists to demand a refund or go home disappointed.

Smokey Tours does not allow participants to take photos, but this policy proves difficult to enforce.

The city of San Francisco eventually banned such mockery of the poor, the New York Times reported in 1909: “This is a heavy blow to Chinatown guides, who have collected a fee of two dollars each. The opium smokers, gamblers, blind paupers, singing children, and other curiosities were all hired.”

Tours also brought positive results, as Professor of History Seth Koven highlights in his research of slumming in Victorian London. Oxford and Cambridge Universities opened study centers in the late 19th-century to inform social policy, which was only possible by seeing the underprivileged neighborhoods firsthand.

Popularity waned after World War II with the creation of welfare and social housing—then rose again in the 1980s and 1990s as those state provisions declined and labor demands increased.

Presenting Poverty

Plastic arrives from all over India to the dark alleys and corrugated shacks of Dharavi in Mumbai —the second-largest slum on the continent of Asia (after Orangi Town in Pakistan ) and third-largest slum in the world. Ushered around by the company Reality Tour and Travel , tourists see a thriving recycling industry which employs around ten thousand to melt, reshape, and mould discarded plastic. They stop to watch the dhobiwallahs , or washermen, scrub sheets from the city’s hospitals and hotels in an open-air laundry area.

In a TripAdvisor review, one recent participant from Virginia appreciated the focus on community. “It was great to hear about the economy, education and livelihood of the residents,” she writes. “The tour group doesn't allow photography or shopping which I think is really important. It didn't feel exploitative, it felt educational.”

One traveler from London commented on the extremity of the scene. "Had to stop after about 20 minutes into it due to the overbearing nature of the surroundings. The tour is not for the faint hearted. I would've liked a few more disclaimers on the website to warn us about the nature of it." Another guest from the United Kingdom expressed disappointment over the so-called family meal. “This was in the home of one of the guides and, whilst his mum made lunch a delicious meal that we ate in her house, she didn’t eat with us so it wasn’t really what I had expected from a family lunch (or the photos promoting such on the website).”

Smokey Tours enters the Manila North Cemetery, inhabited by some of Manila's poorest people.

Children jump from grave to grave in the city’s largest cemetery.

Reality Tours hopes to challenge the stereotypical perception of slums as despairing places inhabited by hopeless people. The tour presented slum residents as productive and hardworking, but also content and happy. Analyzing more than 230 reviews of Reality Tour and Travel in her study , Dr. Melissa Nisbett of King’s College London realized that for many Dharavi visitors, poverty was practically invisible. “As the reviews show, poverty was ignored, denied, overlooked and romanticized, but moreover, it was depoliticized.” Without discussing the reason the slum existed, the tour decontextualized the plight of the poor and seemed only to empower the wrong people–the privileged, western, middle class visitors.

With good intentions, the company states that 80 percent of the profits benefit the community through the efforts of its NGO that works to provide access to healthcare, organize educational programs, and more. Co-founder Chris Way spoke to National Geographic after his company surged in popularity from the sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire . “We do try and be as transparent as possible on our website, which does allay many people’s fears.” Way personally refuses a salary for his work.

No Two Cities Alike

The main question should be: Is poverty the central reason to visit?

Other cities take different approaches to slum tourism. In the early 1990s, when black South Africans began offering tours of their townships—the marginalized, racially-segregated areas where they were forced to live—to help raise global awareness of rampant human rights violations. Rather than exploitation inflicted by outsiders, local communities embraced slum tourism as a vehicle to take matters of their traditionally neglected neighborhoods into their own hands.

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Some free tours of favelas in Rio de Janeiro provided an accessible option to the crowds that infiltrated the city during the World Cup and Summer Olympics, while most companies continue to charge. Tour manager Eduardo Marques of Brazilian Expeditions explains how their authenticity stands out, “We work with some local guides or freelancers, and during the tour we stop in local small business plus [offer] capoeira presentations that [support] the locals in the favela. We do not hide any info from our visitors. The real life is presented to the visitors.”

Smokey Tours in Manila connected tourists with the reality facing inhabitants of a city landfill in Tondo (until 2014 when it closed) to tell their stories. Now the company tours around Baseco near the port, located in the same crowded district and known for its grassroots activism. Locally-based photographer Hannah Reyes Morales documented her experience walking with the group on assignment for National Geographic Travel. “I had permission to photograph this tour from both the operator and community officials, but the tour itself had a no photography policy for the tourists.” With the policy difficult to enforce, some guests secretly snapped photos on their phones. “I observed how differently tourists processed what they were seeing in the tour. There were those who were respectful of their surroundings, and those who were less so.”

All About Intention

Despite sincere attempts by tour operators to mitigate offense and give back to locals, the impact of slum tourism stays isolated. Ghettoized communities remain woven into the fabric of major cities around the world, each with their individual political, historical, and economic concerns that cannot be generalized. Similarly, the motivations behind the tourism inside them are as diverse as the tour participants themselves. For all participants involved, operators or guests, individual intentions matter most.

The Baseco neighborhood is located on the Pasig river near the city port, but lacks access to clean drinking water.

Better connections between cities allow more people to travel than ever before, with numbers of international tourists growing quickly every year. While prosperity and quality of life have increased in many cities, so has inequality. As travelers increasingly seek unique experiences that promise authentic experiences in previously off-limits places, access through tours helps put some areas on the map.

Travel connects people that would otherwise not meet, then provides potential to share meaningful stories with others back home. Dr. Fabian Frenzel, who studies tourism of urban poverty at the University of Leicester, points out that one of the key disadvantages of poverty is a lack of recognition and voice. “If you want to tell a story, you need an audience, and tourism provides that audience.” Frenzel argues that even taking the most commodifying tour is better than ignoring that inequality completely.

For the long-term future of these communities, the complex economic, legal, and political issues must be addressed holistically by reorganizing the distribution of resources. While illuminating the issue on a small scale, slum tourism is not a sufficient answer to a growing global problem.

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The Pros And Cons Of Slum Tourism: Crass Voyeurism Or Enlightened Travel?

Let me begin by saying I  have  engaged in slum tourism (a basic definition of slum tourism would be the kind of tourism that takes you to see impoverished communities).

I took  an African slum Soweto tour  during a long-ago visit to South Africa, to see a place that overflowed with meaning. In 1976, during the Soweto Uprising in which unarmed students were stormed and killed by police for refusing to study in Afrikaans, I was a university student in Political Science, engulfed (at a distance) in liberation movements and revolutions. Soweto was part of that, as well as a major chapter in the bigger  South African story of apartheid  and discrimination.

It was a place I wanted to see, but the then  boycott  of South Africa was in full swing and I would have to wait nearly two decades.

Years later as a journalist, I was escorted through some of the most  crowded favelas  in Rio by a young community nurse who worked with drug addicts and knew everyone. He was respected and we were stopped on every corner for a bit of a chat.

The afternoon I spent in Rocinha gave me  a slightly better understanding of the poverty  that fuels much of the addiction and crime, something I certainly would not have learned from the back of a bus.

It also showed me a side that surprised me – the  regular everyday life  of people less fortunate than myself. The streets were dirty and the housing rickety but people came and went, shopped, talked, laughed – and went to work, determined to make things better.

Oddly enough, at least to me,  not everyone was poor . Walking around highlighted differing characteristics of slums. Some dwellings were decidedly middle-class, because here as everywhere else, when people succeed they don’t necessarily want to leave their friends and family. 

Over the years, visits to  poorer urban and slum areas  have left me unsettled. Children sniffing glue under a bridge in Brasilia. Mothers scavenging on the world’s biggest scrap heap in Manila. Begging for food near a Nairobi slum. Homeless children in Malawi.

These are scenes that drive home the accident of humanity, of where I happened to be born, of my race and privilege, and how easily it might have been otherwise.

On the one hand, it showed me what is life like in a slum, but on the other, it left me unsure of whether I was engaging in ethical tourism.

So was slum tourism positive or detrimental, and does it hurt or help a slum economy?  it still begs to question; “Is slum tourism good or bad?” 

WHAT IS A SLUM? AND WHAT IS SLUM TOURISM?

SLUM DEFINITION

•  noun: 1 –  a squalid and overcrowded urban area inhabited by very poor people.  2 –  a house or building unfit for human habitation.

•  verb:  ( slummed ,  slumming ) (often  slum it)  informal voluntarily spend time in uncomfortable conditions or at a lower social level than one’s own.

Source: Compact Oxford English dictionary

Slum tourism has been around  since Victorian times , when wealthy Londoners trudged down to the East End for a view. The end of apartheid in South Africa fueled a more politically-oriented type of ‘township tour’ while Rocinha has been receiving tourists for years – some 50,000 a year now.

In India, the release of the movie  Slumdog Millionnaire  created space for even more slums of India tours. In Nairobi, enterprising Kenyans are guiding tourists on Kibera slum tours, one of the better-known urban slums (and one of the world’s bigger slum areas) with a population of one million inhabitants.

The  voyeur aspect  of slum tourism makes me intensely uneasy.

Imagine a busload of foreign visitors traipsing down your street, peering into your house, taking a selfie in front of your door… Yet that’s exactly what happens on some township tourism slum tours, often labeled poverty tourism, pity tours, ghetto tourism, reality tours or even poorism – there is no dearth of labels.

So is  slum tourism  ethically acceptable or is it exploitative? What are the advantages and disadvantages of slum tourism? Do our tourist dollars actually help these communities or are we simply paying for a peek into lives we have no intention of ever experiencing for more than a few minutes? What are the impacts of slum development?

SLUM TOURISM PROS AND CONS

Negatives of slum tourism: exploitation and voyeurism.

Why slum tourism is bad (or can be):organized slum visits have come under  harsh criticism , particularly as they become more popular.

Much of the criticism revolves around these slum tourism cons:

• Slum tours treat people like  animals in a zoo  – you stare from the outside but don’t dare get too close.
• Visitors aren’t interested in meaningful interaction; they just want their  photo op . Contact with locals is minimal.
• Money rarely trickles down. Instead,  operators fill their pockets  but the vaunted ‘benefits to the community’ don’t materialize. Slum tourism profits from poverty, which is why it is often called “poverty tourism”.
• People feel degraded  by being stared at doing mundane things – washing, cleaning up, preparing food, things that are private. Their rights to privacy may be violated. Imagine yourself at the receiving end: how would you feel?
• Even when they participate as hosts, local people are often  underpaid and exploited .
• The  image of a country  may be tarnished by publicizing slums (this is an actual concern among certain segments of certain populations – usually the more wealthy).
• The  tours make poverty exotic , otherworldly, almost glamorizing what to inhabitants is a harsh reality which will remain once the tourists are long gone, which is one of the main slum tourism disadvantages.

How true is this picture?

UN-HABITAT  defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack one or more of the following: 1. Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions. 2. Sufficient living space which means not more than three people sharing the same room. 3. Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price. 4. Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people. 5. Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.

Slum tourism benefits: improving local lives

So are there slum tourism advantages? There may be a flip side. Slum tourism has supporters, many of whom believe  tourism will ultimately benefit  the favela or the township and help improve the lives of people who live there.

Visitors who take these tours may  genuinely care  and are interested in knowing more about the people they meet and the places they see.

Here are some of the potential benefits of slum tourism:

• Even if it’s only a little,  some money does enter the community , whether through meals at home or the purchase of art or souvenirs. Many say this tourism boosts the local economy. This trickle-down economy is bound to be better for local residents than picking trash off a stinking garbage heap.
• The tours  change our perceptions of poverty  by putting a face to it and showing visitors that however poor, people are the same everywhere and share similar thoughts and emotions.
• Tourists will visit areas they would never go to otherwise.
• Some operators have made sure part of their profits are recycled into local hands, for example by  starting local charities .
• A spotlight on poor areas by foreigners may help governments move more quickly to  improve conditions by using tourism as an economic developement tool.
• Even in the poorest areas  development and innovation  can take place: slum tours can showcase the economic and cultural energies of a neighborhood.
• They can  improve our understanding  of poverty and of one another – and of the world at large.
• Local people may support them. Locally-run  slum tourism examples  include Zezinho da Rocinha’s own favela tour (a slum-dweller himself, see below what he has to say on the effects of tourism in his community).
• They can  bring us closer  and demystify and  debunk some of our stereotypes . This excellent video (below) by one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, highlights the dangers of what she calls a ‘single story’, or what happens when a single point of view is hammered home, in this case, the ‘single story’ of poverty and pity.

THE SLUM TOURISM DEBATE: SO, IS IT A GOOD THING OR A BAD THING?

There is no such thing as a star system for slum tours, an ethical rating that will tell you how well an operator is performing or what the real economic benefits of tourism in the community really are. So, it’s up to us to find out before booking.

Here are some of the things we should look for:

• Size matters . A huge tour rumbling through a neighborhood in an air-conditioned bus is probably not going to promote much interchange with local residents.  Ask how many people will be on your tour.
• Look at the highlights and figure  how long you’ll be  in each place. If you’re expected to eat in a home, visit a local shebeen and walk through several streets in the space of an hour, chances are you won’t be getting to know your hosts in any significant way. Visitors need and have asked for more time for real exchanges with local people, as real as such unequal exchanges can be.  Make sure you have enough time to interact.
• Explore how the tour was  designed . Who put it together? Who came up with the itinerary? Why are you visiting one place and not another?  Ask the organizers if local people were involved, and double-check once you’re in the community.
• Follow the money.  Find out where the profits go and if the tourism economics are more beneficial than harmful. Are some profits returned to the community? What has been achieved – are there more schools, projects, education or jobs as a result?  Ask the operators, and double check their answers.

Granted, much of this information will not be easy to find, especially before you book.

But you have the ethical obligation to find out: what are the disadvantages of slum tourism in the area you are visiting? But by asking the right questions, you are showing you care, and are forcing tour operators to  tackle these issues .

Once you’re on the tour, you’ll have a better sense of its ethics and if you don’t like what you see, there’s always social media. If a tour is exploitative – well, word gets around fast.

There are many signs  slum tourism is changing the future of tourism.

More charities are being set up to spread profits around, local people are becoming increasingly involved, negative stereotypes are being challenged, local artisans are being encouraged to sell their work to tourists at fair prices, and tour operators themselves are beginning to understand that slum tourism is not like mass tourism: they don’t have to cram every possible attraction into the shortest possible time.

While some feel much good can come from  properly thought-out slum tours , others believe slum tourism has done more harm than good, with insensitive itineraries pulled together purely for gain.

So which is it: Would visitors be better off staying in a  luxury downtown hotel  while pretending not to see the slum next door? Or is knowledge and awareness the first step towards understanding?

For more information on slum tourism, these resources may help:

• Slum Dwellers International  is a is a network of community-based organizations of the urban poor in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Slumtourism.net  brings together academics and practitioners working on tourism in slums and poor rural areas. 
• The  world’s five largest slums .

Both For And Against Slum Tourism

By Zezinho Da Rocinha, Proud Favela Resident In Rio De Janeiro

I certainly understand the  controversy about slum tours . I am both FOR and AGAINST them. Let me explain this.

I was born, grew up and still live in Brazil’s largest slum, or  favela . Life is dificult yes, but not impossible. I am proud to live here in Rocinha. I will never leave here, I do not want to leave here. This is my home. This is my feeling about this issue of  slum/favela tourism .

What I like about the tours is the contact I get from foreigns who come here. This interaction helps me to educate people about my life here in the favela. When foreigners come here I feel like my home or favela has value and is worth to be seen. The Brazilian government mostly ignores us and helps us very little.  We want our voice to be heard . I want to feel that somebody on the outside cares about us and recognizes that we exist. Up until about a few years ago favelas did not exist on maps. Why was this?

Many foreigners come to learn how we create and live in our comunity with little or no goverment involvement. Others come because of the art and culture that exist here.

I do not judge why people come, they confirm that we exist. 

I started in tourism because I saw the opportunity to show my favela and help create jobs for others here.

We live here, and should be making the tours here. I have heard outsider tour companies exaggerate things or  tell outright lies  about my favela. They do this because they do not know and do not live here. I am here to share a social experience, not provide some adrenalin tour.

With my work, many visitors return to volunteer with social projects or to start their own programs in the favela. Recently people have contacted me wanting to make projects like a rooftop garden class. Another person wants to help bring solar energy here. These are people who came on visits here in the favela. Is this bad? What I do NOT like about the tours …tours that use jeeps or trucks are the worst because they present us like a zoo. The tourists have no contact with the locals and this reinforces a sense of possible danger. Tours or visits where the guests walk in the favela are more welcome. There is one company that tells their guests not to interact with the locals if they are approached. This is wrong.

The glamorization of violence is another thing that we do not like here. It is as if these companies are trying to capitalize on some kind of excitement. Favelas are not war zones, and people need understand that real, honest hardworking people live there, we just make less money. There are tour companies here who use the community to make money but they give very little or nothing back to the community. This is not right. They should contribute something for the betterment of the favela. There are plenty of social projects here that could use help.  I am not ashamed to live in the favela and people should not feel shame to come and visit. All we ask is please do not take photos of us like we are animals, and do not have fear if we say hello to you on the street.  If we want to stop or reduce poverty, we need to stop pretending it does not exist. I call it socially responsible tourism. If you chose to tour this type of community, try to give something back, however big or small. I work with an art school and encourage people to bring art supplies, not money. Slums, favelas and shanties are where 1/3 of the population live in all major cities, serving the needs of mostly the rich. Visiting these places may increase your knowledge and awareness at a much deeper level than visiting a museum or art exhibition.  Ignoring poverty is not going to make it go away  and those who have more, should not feel guilt. Unfortunately, this world will always have this unbalance of wealth. Sad but true. Read more about Zezinho on his blog,  Life in Rocinha  or  book a favela walking tour .

— Originally published on 06 February 2011

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Slumming it: how tourism is putting the world’s poorest places on the map

Lecturer in the Political Economy of Organisation, University of Leicester

Disclosure statement

From 2012-2014 Fabian Frenzel was a Marie-Curie Fellow and has received funding from the European Union to conduct his research on slum tourism.

University of Leicester provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Back in Victorian times, wealthier citizens could sometimes be found wandering among London’s poorer, informal neighbourhoods, distributing charity to the needy. “Slumming” – as it was called – was later dismissed as a morally dubious and voyeuristic pastime. Today, it’s making a comeback; wealthy Westerners are once more making forays into slums – and this time, they’re venturing right across the developing world.

According to estimates by tour operators and researchers , over one million tourists visited a township, favela or slum somewhere in the world in 2014. Most of these visits were made as part of three or four-hour tours in the hotspots of global slum tourism; major cities and towns in Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro and Mumbai.

There is reason to think that slum tourism is even more common than these numbers suggest. Consider the thousands of international volunteers, who spend anything from a few days to several months in different slums across the world.

The gap year has become a rite of passage for young adults between school and university and, in the UK, volunteering and travel opportunities are often brokered by commercial tourism operators. In Germany and the US, state sponsored programs exist to funnel young people into volunteering jobs abroad.

International volunteering is no longer restricted to young people at specific points in their lives. Volunteers today are recruited across a wide range of age groups . Other travellers can be considered slum-tourists: from international activists seeking cross-class encounters to advance global justice, to students and researchers of slums and urban development conducting fieldwork in poor neighbourhoods.

Much modern tourism leads richer people to encounter relatively poorer people and places. But in the diverse practices of slum tourism, this is an intentional and explicit goal: poverty becomes the attraction – it is the reason to go.

Many people will instinctively think that this kind of travel is morally problematic, if not downright wrong. But is it really any better to travel to a country such as India and ignore its huge inequalities?

Mapping inequality

It goes without saying that ours is a world of deep and rigid inequalities. Despite some progress in the battles against absolute poverty, inequality is on the rise globally . Few people will openly disagree that something needs to be done about this – but the question is how? Slum tourism should be read as an attempt to address this question. So, rather than dismissing it outright, we should hold this kind of tourism to account and ask; does it help to reduce global inequality?

My investigation into slum tourism provided some surprising answers to this question. We tend to think of tourism primarily as an economic transaction. But slum tourism actually does very little to directly channel money into slums: this is because the overall numbers of slum tourists and the amount of money they end up spending when visiting slums is insignificant compared with with the resources needed to address global inequality.

But in terms of symbolic value, even small numbers of slum tourists can sometimes significantly alter the dominant perceptions of a place. In Mumbai, 20,000 tourists annually visit the informal neighbourhood of Dharavi , which was featured in Slumdog Millionaire. Visitor numbers there now rival Elephanta Island in Mumbai – a world heritage site.

Likewise, in Johannesburg, most locals consider the inner-city neighbourhood of Hillbrow to be off limits. But tourists rate walking tours of the area so highly that the neighbourhood now features as one of the top attractions of the city on platforms such as Trip Advisor . Tourists’ interest in Rio’s favelas has put them on the map; before, they used to be hidden by city authorities and local elites .

Raising visibility

Despite the global anti-poverty rhetoric, it is clear that today’s widespread poverty does benefit some people. From their perspective, the best way of dealing with poverty is to make it invisible. Invisibility means that residents of poor neighbourhoods find it difficult to make political claims for decent housing, urban infrastructure and welfare. They are available as cheap labour, but deprived of full social and political rights.

Slum tourism has the power to increase the visibility of poor neighbourhoods, which can in turn give residents more social and political recognition. Visibility can’t fix everything, of course. It can be highly selective and misleading, dark and voyeuristic or overly positive while glossing over real problems. This isn’t just true of slum tourism; it can also be seen in the domain of “virtual slumming” – the consumption of images, films and books about slums.

Yet slum tourism has a key advantage over “virtual slumming”: it can actually bring people together. If we want tourism to address global inequality, we should look for where it enables cross-class encounters; where it encourages tourists to support local struggles for recognition and build the connections that can help form global grassroots movements. To live up to this potential, we need to reconsider what is meant by tourism, and rethink what it means to be tourists.

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Inside the Very Real World of 'Slum Tourism'

By Mark Ellwood

Hurricane Katrina left physical and emotional scars on New Orleans, and America, but nowhere was its impact more devastating than the city’s Lower Ninth Ward. Three years after the storm, in October 2008, the district was still pockmarked with half-demolished homes and patches of overgrown grass. It was also dotted with artworks, site-specific installations by the likes of Wangechi Mutu and her Ms Sarah House . Those works formed part of the city’s inaugural art biennial, Prospect New Orleans , bringing tourists to drive and wander through the area in droves. But visitors were caught in an uncomfortable paradox, their art viewing underpinned by the backdrop of one of America’s poorest neighborhoods—or what was left of it.

Locals stood by as various VIPs peered at Mutu’s work. When one of the arterati mustered up courage enough to ask if she minded the influx of gawkers, she shrugged and dodged the question. “It’s nice to have the art here, because it means people are coming to see more than just our ruined homes.” Not everyone reacted to the incomers with such neutrality, though—take one hand-painted sign erected in the neighborhood post-Katrina, that read:

TOURIST Shame On You Driving BY without stopping Paying to see my pain 1,600+ DIED HERE

Both reactions are understandable, and spotlight the uneasy distinction locals in the area might have drawn between being viewed rather than feeling seen. Is it wrong, though, to go beyond the sightseeing mainstays of somewhere like the French Quarter and into a corner of the city that might be blighted or underprivileged as these visitors did? It’s an awkward, but intriguing, question, and one that underpins a nascent niche in travel. It has been nicknamed ‘slum tourism,’ though it’s a broad umbrella term travel that involves visiting underprivileged areas in well-trafficked destinations. Such experiences are complex, since they can seem simultaneously important (bringing much-needed revenues, educating visitors first hand) and inappropriate (a gesture of misunderstanding fitting for a modern-day Marie Antoinette).

Indeed, even those who operate in the field seem to struggle to reconcile those divergent urges. Researching this story, there was resistance, suspicion, and even outright hostility from seasoned slum tourism vets. Deepa Krishnan runs Mumbai Magic , which specializes in tours around the city, home to what’s estimated as Asia’s largest slum; here, about a million people live in ad hoc homes a few miles from Bollywood’s glitz (it’s now best known as home to the hero of Slumdog Millionaire ). "The Spirit of Dharavi" tour takes in this settlement, a two-hour glimpse into everyday life aiming to show that the squalor for which it’s become shorthand is only part of Dharavi story. It’s also a hub of recycling, for example, and home to women’s co-op for papadum-making. Organized as a community project, rather than on a commercial basis, all profits are ploughed back into Dharavi. Yet pressed to talk by phone rather than email, Deepa balked. “I’ve been misquoted too often,” she said.

The organizer of another alt-tourism operation was even more reluctant, and asked not to be quoted, or included here, at all. Its superb premise—the formerly homeless act as guides to help visitors see and understand overlooked corners of a well-trafficked city—seemed smartly to upend tradition. Rather than isolating ‘the other,’ it shows the interconnectedness of so much in a modern city. The fact that both of these firms, whose businesses fall squarely into such non-traditional tours, are so squeamish about the topic is instructive—and reassuring for the rest of us when we’re conflicted about whether or not it’s ethical to treat deprivation as a distraction.

Call it poorism, misery tourism, poverty tourism—it still smacks of exploitation.

The contemporary concept of slum tourism dates back about 30 years, according to Ko Koens, Ph.D., a Dutch academic who specializes in this field and runs slumtourism.net . The South African government began bussing municipal workers into townships like Soweto in the 1980s, he explains, intending to educate them on no-go areas within their fiefdom. “International tourists, mostly activists, who wanted to show their support [for township-dwellers] started doing these tours, too. And after apartheid ended, the operators who were running them for the government realized they could do them commercially.” (It’s now a vital part of the country’s tourism economy, with some estimates that one in four visitors to the country book a Township Tour. )

Simultaneously, tourists were beginning to explore the slums or favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These are the shantytowns that six percent of Brazil’s population calls home. Bolted to the steep hills overlooking the waterfront mansions where wealthy Cariocas chose to live, these higgledy piggledy shacks perch precariously, as if jumbled in the aftermath of an earthquake. From here, the idea of slum tourism began spreading across the world, from Nairobi to the Dominican Republic, and of course, India. Mumbai Magic isn’t alone in operating tours of Bombay’s Dharavi slums—there are countless tours available of areas that now rival the Marine Drive or the Gateway of India as local attractions.

Yet though it’s a thriving new niche, many travelers remain squeamish about the idea. In part, of course, it’s thanks to the words "slum tourism," yet none of the alternatives seem any less confrontational. Call it poorism, misery tourism, poverty tourism—it still smacks of exploitation. There are also safety concerns, too: After all, Brazil supplied almost half the entries in a recent list of the world’s 50 most dangerous cities , not to mention that the world’s latest health crisis is headquartered in the stagnant waters on which the favela residents rely. The sense of being an interloper, or that such deprivation is Disneyfied into a showcase solely for visitors, is an additional factor—especially when spoofish ideas like Emoya’s Shanty Town hotel , a faux South African slum that offsets discomforts like outdoor toilets with underfloor heating and Wi-Fi, turn out not to be Saturday Night Live skits.

Muddled motivations add to the discomfort; one in-depth study found it was pure curiosity, rather than education, say, or self-actualization, that drove most visitors to book a trip around the Dharavi slums. One first-hand account by a Kenyan who went from the slums of Nairobi to studying at Wesleyan University underlines those awkward findings. “I was 16 when I first saw a slum tour. I was outside my 100-square-foot house washing dishes… “ he wrote. “Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage. Before I could say anything, she had moved on.” He makes one rule of any such trips all too clear: If you undertake any such tours, focus on memories rather than Instagram posts.

Sarah Enelow-Snyder

Juliana Shallcross

Boutayna Chokrane

Sarah James

Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage.

The biggest challenge, though, is the lack of accreditation. It's still a frustratingly opaque process, to gauge how profits made will directly improve conditions in that slum, admits Tony Carne, who runs Urban Adventures , a division of socially conscious firm Intrepid Travel. His firm is a moderated marketplace for independent guides—much like an Etsy for travel—and offers a wide range of slum tours around the world. Carne supports some form of regulation to help reassure would-be clients of a slum tour’s ethical credentials. “The entire integrity of our business is sitting on this being the right thing to do,” he says, though he also predicts a shift in the business, likely to make such regulation unnecessary. Many charities have begun suggesting these slum tours to donors keen to see how and where their money is used, outsourced versions of the visits long available to institutional donors. He is already in to co-brand slum tours with several major nonprofits, including Action Aid via its Safe Cities program; Carne hopes that such partnerships will reassure travelers queasy about such tours’ ethics and finances. “Everyone from the U.N. down has said poverty alleviation through tourism can only be a reality if someone does something,” he says. “It will not solve itself by committee. It will solve itself by action.”

Carne’s theory was echoed by my colleague Laura Dannen Redman, who visited the Philippi township in Cape Town under the aegis of a local nonprofit. It was a private tour, but the group hopes to increase awareness to bolster the settlement’s infrastructure. She still vividly recalls what she saw, half a year later. “The homes were corrugated iron, but tidy, exuding a sense of pride with clean curtains in the windows. But there was this one open gutter I can't forget. The water was tinged green, littered with what looked like weeks’ worth of garbage—plastic wrappers and bottles and other detritus. It backed the neighborhood like a gangrenous moat," she says. "They deserve better. It does feel disingenuous, shameful, even if you’re there to learn and want to help. But the end result was motivating. We did feel called to action, to pay more attention to the plight of so many South Africans.” In the end, perhaps, it isn’t what we call it, or even why we do it that matters—it’s whether the slum tourism experience inspires us to try to make a change.

The good, bad and ugly of slum tourism

Share story.

When Marie Antoinette wanted to escape the confines and pressures of courtly life, she retreated to her quaint Petit Hameau, a rustic retreat at Versailles, where she and her companions donned their finest peasant frocks and pretended to be poor.

A century later, fashionable Londoners took that pauper fantasy to a new extreme — nocturnally touring East London’s slums, where they gawked at ladies of the night and coined the phrase “slumming it.” The idiosyncratic pastime eventually made its way across the pond and, before long, New York City socialites were hitting the Bowery in search of opium dens and lowbrow adventure. Back then, slum tourism was sort of a DIY diversion.

Today, it’s an all-inclusive destination vacation. Twenty-first century slum tourism is a far cry from the back -alley excursions of yesteryear. For the right price, discerning travelers can experience firsthand how the poorest of the poor live — some times without ever having to sacrifice first-world conveniences like Wi-Fi, heated floors, and Jacuzzi tubs.

Here are details of some of our (least) favorite poverty-chic getaways, including what a vacation or tour will set you back, where to book — and just how tasteless these options are.

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1.A 5-star South African shantytown

Bloemfontein, South Africa

Lodging from $82 per night

Tastelessness: Very High

Have you ever wanted to steal away to a cozy tin shack in one of South Africa’s sprawling shantytowns — only to change your mind over concerns about crime, noise and generally poor infrastructure? Emoya, a luxury hotel in Bloemfontein, may be just what you’re looking for: A quaint little shantytown tucked safely away on a game preserve. A mere $82 per night will get you a private shack, made of corrugated tin sheets, so you can experience the charm of living in a post-apartheid shantytown, without ever having to set foot in one. The shantys are child-friendly, and come equipped with heated floors, free Wi-Fi, and spa services.

2.Vacation like a border crosser, in Mexico

Parque EcoAlberto

Hidalgo, Mexico

Lodging from $105 per night;

“Night Walk” tour $19 per person.

Tastelessness: Moderate

In Southern Mexico, an eco-park owned by Hñahñu Indians offers tourists a chance to live out the drama and tension of an illegal border crossing. Called “Night Walk,” the strange excursion lasts about four hours and takes groups on an imaginary journey through the desert and across the Rio Grande. A dozen or so Hñahñus act out different roles: fellow migrants in search of work, as well as police on the lookout for border crossers. The park has many other attractions, too — including hot springs, kayaking and campgrounds — but the Night Walk seems to be the biggest draw.

In Indonesia, an authentic, bare-bones (and sometimes flooded) getaway

Banana Republic Village

Jakarta, Indonesia

Lodging $10 per night

Tastelessness: High

Travelers looking for a more realistic third-world experience may find it at “Banana Republic,” a plantation village just minutes outside of Jakarta. Ten dollars per night will get you a room, a mattress, and a fan within this interconnected complex of shanty homes. Bring your own flashlight if you expect to use the outdoor toilet at night, as well as your own toiletries for the communal shower.

If that’s not authentic enough for you, the Airbnb posting notes that “In December, the floods arrive. Heavy rain causes the river surrounding the village to overflow … The rusty roofs leak and leave the homes damp.” According to the ad, your $10 will go toward unclogging the river and repairing damaged roofs — but not before you get the chance to enjoy both.

4. Tour Rio’s largest favela with some of its very own residents

Favela Tourism Workshop

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

From $30 per person

Tastelessness: Moderate to Mild

A Brazilian company called Exotic Tours was the first to offer sightseeing tours of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest slum, Rocinha. In recent years, it began hiring local favela residents to work as guides, an effort that created a more authentic experience for travelers, and provided some income for members of the community. The company claims that some of the proceeds benefit a local school, so tourists can rest assured that they’re doing their part to help Rio’s urban poor. Be warned, though: Increasing tourism has helped to transform Rocinha from a sprawling shantytown into a semi-developed urban slum, so it’s perhaps less gritty than the average poverty tourist might prefer.

5.Enjoy San Francisco’s grittiest neighborhood alongside its homeless

San Francisco, Calif.

Tour is $20 per person.

Tastelessness: Relatively mild

Most visitors to San Francisco try to avoid the Tenderloin, a downtown neighborhood once notorious for its high crime rate but now better known for its population of vagrants. One man, Milton Aparicio, is trying to change that, by offering tours that highlight the Tenderloin’s unique culture of homeless. “We’ll go to a couple of shelters, day centers for children, soup kitchens, “ he advertises, offering “a guided experience of what it’s like to be homeless from a friendly homeless person.” Like most other examples of slum tourism, it promises an eye-opening experience that will certainly lead to personal growth and enlightenment.

In that respect, contemporary poverty tourism still resembles its 19th century predecessors. While the original London slumming parties were unabashedly voyeuristic and exploitative, they nevertheless revealed an upside: The parting of the veil between rich and poor moved some members of the upper classes to charitable action. “London slumming brought to the notice of the rich much suffering,” The New York Times reported in 1884, “and led to sanitary reforms.”

Modern day slumming, by contrast, is often characterized at the outset as a socially responsible endeavor — often purporting to benefit impoverished communities. That said, it’s still a little creepy to pay for the experience of watching poor people like animals in a zoo.

Catherine Traywick is a fellow at Foreign Policy magazine.

‘We are not wildlife’: Kibera residents slam poverty tourism

Tourism in Nairobi slum is rising but many residents are angry at becoming an attraction for wealthy foreign visitors.

Kibera, Kenya  –  Sylestine Awino rests on her faded brown couch, covering herself with a striped green shuka, a traditional Maasai fabric.

It’s exactly past noon in a noisy neighbourhood at the heart of Kibera,  Kenya ‘s largest slum, and the 34-year-old  has just finished her daily chores.

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Directly opposite Awino, her two daughters are busy studying for an upcoming math exam.

The family will not have lunch today.

“We don’t afford the luxury of having two consecutive meals,” says Awino, a mother of three. “We took breakfast, meaning we will skip lunch and see if we can afford dinner”.

Up until five years ago, Awino made a living selling fresh food in Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city. There, she interacted with tourists who came to enjoy the sandy beaches of the Indian Ocean.

But in 2013, she decided to move to Kibera, in the capital, Nairobi, aiming for new opportunities – only to meet camera-toting tourists again, this time eager to explore the crowded slum where many are unable to afford basic needs. 

“This was strange. I used to see families from Europe and the United States  flying to Mombasa to enjoy our oceans and beaches,”  says Awino, who is now a housewife – her husband, a truck driver, provides for the family.  

“Seeing the same tourists manoeuvring this dusty neighbourhood to see how we survive was shocking,” she adds.

Awino recalls one incident a few months ago when a group of tourists approached her, with one of them trying to take a picture of her.

“I felt like an object,” she says. “I wanted to yell at them, but I was afraid of the tour guides accompanying them”. 

Kibera has seen a sudden rise of tourists over the past decade, with a number of companies offering guided tours showcasing how its residents live.

The slum faces high unemployment and poor sanitation, making living conditions dire for its residents.

According to Kenya’s 2009 census, Kibera is home to about 170,000 people. Other sources, however, estimate its population to be up to two million people.

Because of the high population, housing is inadequate. Many residents are living in tiny, 12ft by 12ft shack rooms, built in some cases with mud walls, a ridged roof and dirt floor. The small structures house up to eight people, with many sleeping on the floor.

Last week, thousands of families were left homeless  after the government demolished homes, schools and churches to pave way for a road expansion.

Strolling through the dusty pathways sandwiched by the thin iron-sheet-walled houses,  Musa Hussein is angry to see the growing popularity of the guided tours.

“Kibera is not a national park and we are not wildlife,” says the 67-year-old, who was born and raised here.

“The only reason why these tours exist is because [a] few people are making money out of it,” he adds.

The trade of showing a handful of wealthy people how the poor are living, Hussein argues, is morally wrong and tour companies should stop offering this service. 

‘We created employment for ourselves’

Kibera Tours is one of the several companies that have been set up to meet the demand.

Established in 2008, the company has between 100 to 150 customers annually. Each client is charged around $30 for a three-hour tour, according to Frederick Otieno, the cofounder of Kibera Tours.

“The idea behind it was to simply show the positive side of Kibera and promote unique projects around the slums,” he says. “By doing this, we created employment for ourselves and the youth around us”.

The tour company employs 15 youths, working in shifts.

Willis Ouma is one of them.

Midmorning on a cloudy Saturday, the 21-year-old is wearing a bright red shirt. Accompanied by a colleague, he stands at one of the slum’s entrances, anxiously waiting to greet a group of four Danish tourists who have registered for the day’s tour.

“I have to impress them because tourists recommend to each other,” he says.

For three years, Ouma has been spending most of his weekends acting as a tour guide for hundreds of visitors.

“They enjoy seeing this place, which makes me want to do more. But some locals do not like it all,” he says, adding that he often has to calm down protesting residents.

Ouma earns $4 for every tour.

“This is my side hustle because it generates some extra cash for my survival,” he says. “I used my earnings to start a business of hawking boiled eggs”.

What would happen to an African like me in Europe or America, touring and taking photos of their poor citizens? by  Sylestine Awino, Kibera resident

One of the Danish tourists is 46-year-old Lotte Rasmussen, a Nairobi resident who has toured Kibera more than 30 times, often with friends who visit from abroad.

“I bring friends to see how people live here. The people might not have money like us, but they are happy and that’s why I keep on coming,” she says, carefully bending down to take an image of a smiling Kibera toddler.

The tour includes stops at sites where visitors can buy locally-made craftwork, including ornaments and traditional clothing.

“We support local initiatives like children’s homes and women’s groups hence I do not see a problem with ethical issues,” says Rasmussen.

But Awino remains adamant.

She maintains that it is morally unfair that tourists keep on coming to the place she calls home.

“Think of the vice versa,” she says, “What would happen to an African like me in Europe or America, touring and taking photos of their poor citizens?”

Wednesday, 1 May, 2024

Slum Tourism: an ethical choice? A complex dilemma

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Elisa Spampinato is a travel writer and a Community Storyteller who has lived and worked in Italy, Brazil, and the UK where she is currently located. Practitioner, researcher, speaker, and consultant for sustainable tourism with years of experience in local development and social projects, and a passionate advocate for ethical and responsible tourism. As a writer, she has collaborated with Tourism Concern , Equality in Tourism, Gender Responsible Tourism – GRT, Travindy and Tourism Watch . She has published a book on Slum Tourism in Rio de Janeiro and she continues telling the stories of tourism encounters in local communities, especially the traditional, rural and indigenous ones. Among other things, she is the Community-Based Tourism specialist and Ambassador for the Transformational Travel Council (TTC) Elisa can be followed on her Blog , Facebook , LinkedIN and Instagram .

Slums are complex realities that present hugely varying scenarios, even within the same city. In a similar way, the term ‘Slum Tourism’ does not refer to a homogeneous phenomenon. Therefore, the answers to our question can differ according to the specific context we are considering. Slum Tourism can be an ethical choice, and yet in some cases it is definitely not.

Although several decades have passed since its first global appearance in Brazil in the 1980s, Slum Tourism continues to be a very controversial phenomenon, while it registers an overall rise in demand. Data about this niche form of experiential tourism is intrinsically limited, although we know that the numbers of visitors are significant, and the favela of Rocinha alone receives an average of 50,000 tourists per year. Therefore, it is crucial – and I dare say even necessary – to understand the key factors determining the potentially positive and innovative impacts, nowadays recorded in an increasing number of cases, that follow a trend seemingly in contrast to the image of the early days, when the term ‘human zoos’ was coined.

It is known that the criticisms of this kind of tourism, where they exist, are fierce and poignant, and with good reason.

The most common accusations raised against Slum Tourism, in fact, are serious ones and are mainly linked to:

• exploitation of poverty,
• reinforcement of cultural stigma,
• disrespect of human privacy and, last but not least,
• commodification of social issues and marginalisation.

However, instances do not necessarily lead to such outcomes, and many grassroots examples prove that more nuances and possibilities need to be added to the picture.

Moreover, there is now a greater variety of actors involved, with motivations that go beyond simple financial interest, which opens space for the conscious design of ethical outcomes.

A closer look at the range of local experiences springing up in many locations, shows us that Slum Tourism can be a force for good and it can even provide long-lasting benefits that improve the local people’s quality of life.

Grassroots positive examples

In India , Reality Tours – founded in 2005, and inspired by the work done in some carioca slums –  is active in Mumbai’s biggest slum Dharavi and in Delhi, and has started several educational programmes through its sister organisation Reality Gives , which since 2009 has invested in the future of the local youth by providing training and professional skill-building options. Slum Tourism here is an active tool used towards poverty reduction and social development.

In Brazil , probably due to their longer history, a traditionally more engaged third sector and a consistent level of governmental support during the Olympics in 2016, the slums are sometimes an incredible laboratory of social innovation, and are able to share many positive examples. The MUF – Museu de Favela , for example, an open-air museum that celebrates the history and cultural roots of the community with massive colourful graffiti on the residents’ houses; the Morrinho Project , a twenty-three year old social project that has invested in creativity and imagination as a weapon against the limiting of options open to the local youth; Rocinha Original Tour , the first Community-Based Agency formally created in a Brazilian slum, highly rated on Trip Advisor and with international visibility; Santa Marta collective is a group of twelve certified local tour guides from the same slum – active in local government discussions, it collaborates regularly with academic research centres to strengthen their unity and the rights of the sector and their own community.

Among the positive benefits registered in these and other cases we find the following:

• a rise in self-esteem in the local community members,
• deconstruction of cultural stigma traditionally associated with the favela ,
• a boost to the local economy and potential for sustainable development,
• social inclusion of marginalised segments of society and professional skills building,
• women and youth empowerment.

It seems obvious from these examples that a single narrative story appears to be limiting, partial, and dangerous overall, because it could leave in the shade, and even suppress, experiences that need more visibility to grow and to produce further fruits that are beneficial to the locals in the process.

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Slumtourism.net

Home of the slum tourism research network, virtual tourism in rio’s favelas, welcome to lockdown stories.

Lockdown Stories emerged as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has impacted communities all around the world and has brought unprecedented challenges. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro this included the loss of income and visibility from tourism on which community tourism and heritage projects depend.  In that context, Lockdown Stories investigated how community tourism providers responded, and what support they needed to transform their projects in the new circumstances.  In these times of isolation, Lockdown Stores aims to create new digital connections between communities across the world by sharing ‘Lockdown Stories’ through online virtual tours.

We are inviting you to engage in this new virtual tourism platform and to virtually visit six favelas in Rio de Janeiro: Cantagalo, Chapéu Mangueira, Babilônia, Providência, Rocinha and Santa Marta.

The tours are free but booking is required. All live tours are in Portuguese with English translation provided.

Tours happen through November and December, every Tuesday at 7 pm (UK) / 4 pm (Brazil) Please visit  lockdownstories.travel   where you can find out more about the project.

This research project is based on collaboration between the University of Leicester, the University of Rio de Janeiro and Bournemouth University and is funded by the University of Leicester QR Global Challenges with Research Fund (Research England).

Touristification Impossible

Call for Papers – Research Workshop

Touristification Impossible:

Tourism development, over-tourism and anti-tourism sentiments in context.

4 th and 5 th June 2019, Leicester UK

TAPAM – Tourism and Placemaking Research Unit – University of Leicester School of Business

Keynotes by Scott McCabe, Johannes Novy, Jillian Rickly and Julie Wilson

Touristification is a curious phenomenon, feared and desired in almost equal measure by policy makers, businesses and cultural producers, residents, social movements and last but not least, tourists themselves. Much current reflection on over-tourism, particularly urban tourism in Europe, where tourism is experienced as an impossible burden on residents and cities, repeats older debates: tourism can be a blessing or blight, it brings economic benefits but costs in almost all other areas. Anti-tourism social movements, residents and some tourists declare ‘touristification impossible’, asking tourists to stay away or pushing policy makers to use their powers to stop it. Such movements have become evident in the last 10 years in cities like Barcelona and Athens and there is a growing reaction against overtourism in several metropolitan cities internationally.

This workshop sets out to re-consider (the impossibility of) touristification. Frequently, it is understood simplistically as a process in which a place, city, region, landscape, heritage or experience becomes an object of tourist consumption.  This, of course, assumes an implicit or explicit transformation of a resource into a commodity and carries an inherent notion of decline of value, from ‘authentic’ in its original state to ‘commodified’ after touristification. In other words, touristification is often seen as a process of ‘selling out’. But a change of perspective reveals the complexities involved. While some may hope to make touristification possible, it is sometimes actually very difficult and seemingly impossible: When places are unattractive, repulsive, controversial, difficult and contested, how do they become tourist attractions? Arguably in such cases value is added rather than lost in the process of touristification. These situations require a rethink not just of the meaning of touristification, but the underlying processes in which it occurs. How do places become touristically attractive, how is attractiveness maintained and how is it lost? Which actors initiate, guide and manipulate the process of touristification and what resources are mobilised?

The aim of this two-day workshop is to provide an opportunity to challenge the simplistic and biased understanding of tourism as a force of good and touristification as desirable, so common among destination marketing consulting and mainstream scholarly literature. But it will equally question a simplistic but frequent criticism of touristification as ‘sell-out’ and ‘loss of authenticity’.

We invite scholars, researchers, practitioners and PhD students to submit conceptual and/or empirical work on this important theme. We welcome submissions around all aspects and manifestations of touristification (social, economic, spatial, environmental etc.) and, particularly, explorations of anti-tourism protests and the effects of over-tourism. The workshop is open to all theoretical and methodological approaches. We are delighted to confirm keynote presentations by Scott McCabe, Jillian Rickly, Johannes Novy and Julie Wilson.

The workshop is organised by the Tourism and Placemaking Research Unit (TAPAM) of the School of Business and builds on our first research workshop last year on ‘Troubled Attractions’, which brought together over 30 academics from the UK and beyond.

The workshop format

The research workshop will take place in the University of Leicester School of Business. It will combine invited presentations by established experts with panel discussions and research papers. Participants will have the chance to network and socialize during a social event in the evening of Tuesday 4 th June. There is small fee of £20 for participation. Registration includes workshop materials; lunch on 4 th and 5 th June 2019 and social event on 4 th June.

Guidelines for submissions

We invite submissions of abstracts (about 500 words) by 31 st April 2019 . Abstracts should be sent by email to: Fatos Ozkan Erciyas ( foe2 (at) le.ac.uk ).

Digital Technology, Tourism and Geographies of Inequality at AAG April 2019 in DC

Digital technology, tourism and geographies of inequality.

Tourism is undergoing major changes in the advent of social media networks and other forms of digital technology. This has affected a number of tourism related processes including marketing, destination making, travel experiences and visitor feedback but also various tourism subsectors, like hospitality, transportation and tour operators. Largely overlooked, however, are the effects of these changes on questions concerning inequality. Therefore, the aim of this session is to chart this relatively unexplored territory concerning the influence of technologically enhanced travel and tourism on development and inequality.

In the wake of the digital revolution and its emerging possibilities, early debates in tourism studies have been dominated by a belief that new technologies are able to overcome or at least reduce inequality. These technologies, arguably, have emancipatory potential, inter alia, by increasing the visibility of neglected groups, neighborhoods or areas, by lowering barriers of entry into tourism service provision for low-income groups or by democratizing the designation what is considered valuable heritage. They also, however, may have homogenizing effects, for example by subjecting formerly excluded spaces to global regimes of real estate speculation or by undermining existing labour market regimes and standards in the transport and hospitality industries. These latter effects have played a part in triggering anti-tourism protests in a range of cities across the world.

In this session we aim, specifically, to interrogate these phenomena along two vectors: mobility and inequality.

Sponsor Groups : Recreation, Tourism, and Sport Specialty Group, Digital Geographies Specialty Group, Media and Communication Geography Specialty Group Day: 03.04.2019 Start / End Time: 12:40 / 16:15 Room: Calvert Room, Omni, Lobby Level

All abstracts here:

New Paper: Tourist agency as valorisation: Making Dharavi into a tourist attraction

The full paper is available for free download until mid September 2017

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016073831730110X

Tourist agency is an area of renewed interest in tourism studies. Reflecting on existing scholarship the paper identifies, develops and critically examines three main approaches to tourism agency, namely the Service-dominant logic, the performative turn, and tourist valorisation. Tourist valorisation is proposed as a useful approach to theorise the role of tourists in the making of destinations and more broadly to conceptualise the intentions, modalities and outcomes of tourist agency. The paper contributes to the structuring of current scholarship on tourist agency. Empirically it addresses a knowledge gap concerning the role of tourists in the development of Dharavi, Mumbai into a tourist destination.

Touristified everyday life – mundane tourism

Touristified everyday life – mundane tourism: Current perspectives on urban tourism (Berlin 11/12 May 2017) conference program announced / call for registration

Tourism and other forms of mobility have a stronger influence on the urban everyday life than ever before. Current debates indicate that this development inevitably entails conflicts between the various city users. The diverse discussions basically evolve around the intermingling of two categories traditionally treated as opposing in scientific research: ‘the everyday’ and ‘tourism’. The international conference Touristified everyday life – mundane tourism: Current perspectives on urban tourism addresses the complex and changing entanglement of the city, the everyday and tourism. It is organized by the Urban Research Group ‘New Urban Tourism’ and will be held at the Georg Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies in Berlin. May 11, 2017, 4:15 – 5:00pm KEYNOTE – Prof. Dr. Jonas Larsen (Roskilde University): ‚Tourism and the Everyday Practices‘ (KOSMOS-dialog series, admission is free).

May 12, 2017, 9:00am – 6:00pm PANELS – The Extraordinary Mundane, Encounters & Contact Zones, Urban (Tourism) Development (registration required).

See full conference program HERE (pdf)

REGISTRATION

If you are interested in the panels you need to register. An attendance fee of 40 € will be charged to cover the expenses for the event. For students, trainees, unemployed, and the handicapped there is a reduced fee of 20 €.

For registration please fill out the registration form (pdf) and send it back until April 20, 2017 to:

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Georg-Simmel-Zentrum für Metropolenforschung Urban Research Group ’New Urban Tourism’ Natalie Stors & Christoph Sommer Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin You can also send us the form by email.

https://newurbantourism.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/conference-program.pdf

AAG Boston Programm

The slum tourism network presents two sessions at the Association of American Geographer Annual Meeting in Boston on Friday 7 April 2017 :

3230 The complex geographies of inequality in contemporary slum tourism

is scheduled on Friday, 4/7/2017, from 10:00 AM – 11:40 AM in Room 310, Hynes, Third Level

3419 The complex geographies of inequality in contemporary slum tourism

is scheduled on Friday, 4/7/2017, from 1:20 PM – 3:00 PM in Room 210, Hynes, Second Level

Stigma to Brand Conference Programme announced

From Stigma to Brand: Commodifying and Aestheticizing Urban Poverty and Violence

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, February 16-18, 2017

The preliminary programme has now been published and can be downloaded  here .

For attendance, please register at stigma2brand (at) ethnologie.lmu.d e

Posters presenting on-going research projects related to the conference theme are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr (LMU Munich, Germany) Prof. Dr. Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Prof. Dr. Gareth Jones (London School of Economics and Politics, UK)

This conference investigates the motives, processes and effects of the commodification and global representation of urban poverty and violence. Cities have often hidden from view those urban areas and populations stigmatized as poor, dirty and dangerous. However, a growing range of actors actively seek to highlight the existence and appeal of “ghettos”, “slums” and “no-go areas”, in attempts to attract visitors, investors, cultural producers, media and civil society organisations. In cities across the world, processes of place-making and place-marketing increasingly resignify urban poverty and violence to indicate authenticity and creativity. From “slum tourism” to “favela chic” parties and “ghetto fabulous” fashion, these economic and representational practices often approach urban deprivation as a viable brand rather than a mark of shame.

The conference explores how urban misery is transformed into a consumable product. It seeks to understand how the commodification and aestheticization of violent, impoverished urban spaces and their residents affects urban imaginaries, the built environment, local economies and social relations.

What are the consequences for cities and their residents when poverty and violence are turned into fashionable consumer experiences? How is urban space transformed by these processes and how are social relationships reconfigured in these encounters? Who actually benefits when social inequality becomes part of the city’s spatial perception and place promotion? We welcome papers from a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, geography, sociology, and urban studies.

Key note speakers:

• Lisa Ann Richey (Roskilde University)
• Kevin Fox Gotham (Tulane University)

Touring Katutura – New Publication on township tourism in Namibia

A new study on township tourism in Namibia has been published by a team of researchers from Osnabrück University including Malte Steinbrink, Michael Buning, Martin Legant, Berenike Schauwinhold and Tore Süßenguth.

Guided sightseeing tours of the former township of Katutura have been offered in Windhoek since the mid-1990s. City tourism in the Namibian capital had thus become, at quite an early point in time, part of the trend towards utilising poor urban areas for purposes of tourism – a trend that set in at the beginning of the same decade. Frequently referred to as “slum tourism” or “poverty tourism”, the phenomenon of guided tours around places of poverty has not only been causing some media sensation and much public outrage since its emergence; in the past few years, it has developed into a vital field of scientific research, too. “Global Slumming” provides the grounds for a rethinking of the relationship between poverty and tourism in world society. This book is the outcome of a study project of the Institute of Geography at the School of Cultural Studies and Social Science of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. It represents the first empirical case study on township tourism in Namibia.

It focuses on four aspects: 1. Emergence, development and (market) structure of township tourism in Windhoek 2. Expectations/imaginations, representations as well as perceptions of the township and its inhabitants from the tourist’s perspective 3. Perception and assessment of township tourism from the residents’ perspective 4. Local economic effects and the poverty-alleviating impact of township tourism The aim is to make an empirical contribution to the discussion around the tourism-poverty nexus and to an understanding of the global phenomenon of urban poverty tourism.

Free download of the study from here:

https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/9591

CfP Touristified everyday life – mundane tourism : Current perspectives on urban tourism

Touristified everyday life – mundane tourism : Current perspectives on urban tourism

11 and 12 of May 2017 in Berlin

Deadline for proposals: 1st December 2016

Find the f ull call here

Touristifizierter Alltag – Alltäglicher Tourismus: Neue Perspektiven auf das Stadttouristische

CfP AAG 2017

Cfp association of american geographers, boston 5th to 9th april 2017, the complex geographies of inequality in contemporary slum tourism.

The visitation of areas of urban poverty is a growing phenomenon in global tourism (Burgold & Rolfes, 2013; Dürr & Jaffe, 2012; Freire-Medeiros, 2013; Frenzel, Koens, Steinbrink, & Rogerson, 2015). While it can be considered a standard tourism practise in some destinations, it remains a deeply controversial form of tourism that is greeted with much suspicion and scepticism (Freire-Medeiros, 2009). In the emerging research field of slum tourism, the practices are no longer only seen as a specific niche of tourism, but as empirical phenomena that bridge a number of interdisciplinary concerns, ranging from international development, political activism, mobility studies to urban regeneration (Frenzel, 2016).

Slum tourism is sometimes cast as a laboratory where the relationships and interactions between the global North and South appear as micro-sociological encounters framed by the apparent concern over inequality. Beyond questioning the ways in which participants shape the encounters in slum tourism, structural implications and conditions come to the fore. Thus spatial inequality influences opportunities and hinders governance solutions to manage slum tourism operations (Koens and Thomas, 2016). Slum tourism is found to be embedded into post-colonial patterns of discourse, in which ‘North’ and ‘South’ are specifically reproduced in practices of ‘Othering’ (Steinbrink, 2012) . Evidence has been found for the use of slum tourism in urban development (Frenzel, 2014; Steinbrink, 2014) and more widely in the commodification of global care and humanitarian regimes (Becklake, 2014; Holst, 2015). Research has also pointed to the ethical implications of aestheticizing poverty in humanitarian aid performances and the troubles of on-the-ground political engagement in a seemingly post-ideological era (Holst 2016).

More recently a geographical shift has been observed regarding the occurrence of slum tourism. No longer a phenomenon restricted to the Global South, slum tourism now appears increasingly in the global North. Refugee camps such as Calais in the north of France have received high numbers of visitors who engage in charitable action and political interventions. Homeless tent cities have become the subject of a concerned tourist gaze in the several cities of the global north (Burgold, 2014). A broad range of stigmatised neighbourhoods in cities of the global North today show up on tourist maps as visitors venture to ‘off the beaten track’ areas. The resurfacing of slum tourism to the global North furthers reinforces the need to get a deeper, critical understanding of this global phenomena.

Mobility patterns of slum tourists also destabilise notions of what it means to be a tourist, as migrants from the Global North increasingly enter areas of urban poverty in the South beyond temporal leisurely visits, but as low level entry points into cities they intent to make their (temporal) home. Such new phenomena destabilise strict post-colonial framings of slum tourism, pointing to highly complex geographies of inequality.

In this session we aim to bring together research that casts the recent developments in slum tourism research. We aim specifically in advancing geographical research while retaining a broad interdisciplinary outlook.

Please sent your abstract or expressions of interest of now more than 300 words to Tore E.H.M Holst ( tehh (at) ruc.dk ) and Thomas Frisch ( Thomas.Frisch (at) wiso.uni-hamburg.de ) by October 15 th 2016

Becklake, S. (2014). NGOs and the making of “development tourism destinations.” Zeitschrift Für Tourismuswissenschaft , 6 (2), 223–243.

Burgold, J. (2014). Slumming in the Global North. Zeitschrift Für Tourismuswissenschaft , 6 (2), 273–280.

Burgold, J., & Rolfes, M. (2013). Of voyeuristic safari tours and responsible tourism with educational value: Observing moral communication in slum and township tourism in Cape Town and Mumbai. DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin , 144 (2), 161–174.

Dürr, E., & Jaffe, R. (2012). Theorizing Slum Tourism: Performing, Negotiating and Transforming Inequality. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos Y Del Caribe , 0 (93), 113–123

Freire-Medeiros, B. (2009). The favela and its touristic transits. Geoforum , 40 (4), 580–588.

Freire-Medeiros, B. (2013). Touring Poverty . New York N.Y.: Routledge.

Frenzel, F. (2014). Slum Tourism and Urban Regeneration: Touring Inner Johannesburg. Urban Forum , 25 (4), 431–447.

Frenzel, F. (2016). Slumming it: the tourist valorization of urban poverty . London: Zed Books.

Frenzel, F., Koens, K., Steinbrink, M., & Rogerson, C. M. (2015). Slum Tourism State of the Art. Tourism Review International , 18 (2), 237–252.

Holst, T. (2015). Touring the Demolished Slum? Slum Tourism in the Face of Delhi’s Gentrification. Tourism Review International , 18 (4), 283–294.

Steinbrink, M. (2012). We did the slum! Reflections on Urban Poverty Tourism from a Historical Perspective. Tourism Geographies , 14 (2), forthcoming.

Steinbrink, M. (2014). Festifavelisation: mega-events, slums and strategic city-staging – the example of Rio de Janeiro. DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin , 144 (2), 129–145.

Savvy Travel Advice

Travel Research: How do Locals Feel about the Practice of Slum Tourism?

Last updated: July 13, 2022 - Written by Jessica Norah 18 Comments

Have you ever heard of slum tourism? This is a tourist practice where travelers visit poor areas of the Global South to view and learn about the impoverished conditions of local inhabitants. Organized slum tours exist around the world in cities such as Mexico City, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Cape Town, Nairobi, Cairo, and Rio de Janeiro.

While the practice of slum tourism is certainly not a new concept—for instance, 19 th century wealthy Londoners would sometimes go “slumming” in the poorer neighborhoods of London—there has been an increase in the number of organized tours worldwide which has fueled discussion about this controversial practice.

So is slum tourism or poverty tourism harmful or helpful? We’ll examine the arguments for and against slum tourism and then discuss a research study that examined this question by interviewing slum residents and stakeholders in Cairo, Egypt.

Table of Contents:

A Brief Summary of the Arguments For and Against Slum Tourism

As noted, there are a number of arguments for why slum tourism can be beneficial and helpful to residents of impoverished areas. However, there are just as many arguments made about why poverty tourism can be negative and harmful.

Arguments in Support of Slum Tourism

Here’s a general summary of points often noted by supporters of slum tourism:

• It is a profitable business practice that employs locals who live in these impoverished areas,
• Opens visitors’ eyes to poverty in other parts of the world and perhaps motivates them to do something
• Many tours donate a percentage of their profits back to the community in some way (e.g., maintaining parks, schools, or community centers)
• Increasing tourism to these impoverished areas leads to increased income for locals selling products and services
• Increased tourism leads to increased government investment in infrastructure (e.g., roads, telecommunications, bridges, water supply) that will benefit both travelers and locals.

Arguments against the Practice of Slum Tourism

Here’s a general summary of points often brought up against the practice of slum tourism:

• Slum tourism is a practice only geared towards making profits out of viewing the poverty of others
• The practice is exploitative and voyeuristic
• Locals do not like or want to be put on display for tourists and may feel demoralized by it,
• Most tourists only visit out of curiosity, not with the intent of giving back to the community
• Viewing poverty in an idealized manner only downplays the real and difficult living conditions of people in the slums.

Interestingly, much of the commentary on slum tourism comes from those living in the industrialized Western world and is predominately based on opinions and anecdotal information. It is more important to hear from those who actually live in these areas, and to collect this data using empirical methods.

Let’s take a look at a research article recently published in Annals of Tourism Research that specifically investigates whether slum tourism can be a responsible practice by gathering information from both local inhabitants working in the slums and from local experts involved in developing these areas.

Research Study on Slum Tourism

We’ll take a look at the following research article:

Mekawy, M. A. (2012). Responsible slum tourism: Egyptian experience.  Annals of Tourism  Research ,  39 (4), 2092-2113. doi: 10.1016/j.annals.2012.07.006

An Overview of How the Research was Conducted

The research team conducted two different surveys. The first was a survey of 464 people dwelling in the Ashwa’iyyat (Arabic for slums) of Cairo, Egypt who had at least some experience with tourists or tourism. The goal of this survey was to examine the thoughts and feelings of inhabitants about the presence of slum tourism in their neighborhoods, and to better understand the positive and negative aspects of tourism in the eyes of those living in the slums.

The second survey was given to 89 stakeholders who were slum experts, planners, researchers, or developers within Cairo. The goal of this survey was to identify responsible tourist activities and practices to help enhance living conditions for those living in the slum areas.

Research Results and Findings

Those who dwell and work within the slums of Cairo had mixed opinions about various aspects of slum tourism, but over two-thirds of the sample felt that there were positive aspects of slum tourism that could enhance the living conditions in the slums.

Some of the tourism-related activities rated as most positive by inhabitants were collecting donations from tourists for local development projects, the employment of poor local laborers, the direct participation of tourists in local infrastructure improvement, and having tourists help with preparing food and water for poor residents.

Negatively rated aspects of slum tourism included having their rights (e.g., land tenure, traditional customs) being used as tourism assets, voyeuristic and exploitative aspects of tourism, being observed by tourists, and Arab tourists visiting for marriage-related purposes.

Most inhabitants felt that although tourism may be helpful, that there are a lot of barriers to benefiting from slum tourism. The most commonly rated barrier was the high population density of the slums. Others included remoteness of slums, feelings of shame by inhabitants about their living conditions, having little faith in government support, and concerns about human trafficking.

The stakeholders working to help improve conditions in these communities agreed that tourism can be useful to help improve conditions in Cairo. These experts reported that they believed that different pro-poor tourism strategies are needed in the different slum areas of Cairo.

In each of the four distinct slum areas of Cairo, these experts felt that a different tourism strategy would be best and would need to be based on the people dwelling in the area and the physical resources present in each area.

For example, whereas traditional market visits were rated as the most beneficial tourism activity for those living in slums within the historic, medieval part of Cairo, those living in the subdivided agricultural lands may benefit most from rural food and drink celebrations.

What do these Study Findings Mean?

The author concludes that the focus of future discussion should not be on just the presence of slum tourism, but how it can be best planned and implemented to enhance the lives of those dwelling in these poor areas. The study found that the majority of the local inhabitants of the slums do feel that there are ways that slum tourism can enhance their living conditions; however, there are also negative aspects to tourism and there are a lot of barriers that can prevent inhabitants from being able to benefit from tourism.

Expert stakeholders suggest that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to how to best implement responsible tourism in these poor areas and that each area may benefit from a different individual approach. For instance, among the four distinct areas in Cairo, the experts suggested that a different strategy would likely be needed in each area based on the needs of the inhabitants and the locally available resources.

Interested in more research related to slum tourism? Want to find out more about what tourists who take these tours have to say about the practice?

Check out our other post reviewing research about township tourism in South Africa , and our latest article about slum tourism and responsible travel guidelines .

So what do you think of the practice of slum tourism? Is it an essentially exploitative practice? Can slum tourism be conducted in a responsible and ethical manner that provides travelers an enriching experience while also enhancing the living conditions of the poor?

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There are 18 comments on this post.

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Elvia Post author

July 12, 2019 at 11:13 pm

The article, “Travel Research How do Locals Feel about the Practice of Slum Tourism,” by Jessica Norah provoked many questions on the topic of slum tourism. One of those questions pertains to how do the locals feel about slum tourism. “The study found that the majority of the local inhabitants of the slums do feel that there are ways that slum tourism can enhance their living conditions; however, there are also negative aspects to tourism, and there are a lot of barriers that can prevent inhabitants from being able to benefit from tourism.” I put myself in the shoes of the less fortunate. Personally, I wouldn’t be keen of strangers visiting my community to feed their curiosity. The article lists some pros about these tours, such as providing essential improvements to the community. I would be interested to know how much of the percentage of the money donated goes into enriching these less fortunate communities. How are the affected kept in mind when the individuals create the tours, and is the community asked if they want to be part of this project. I would assume no based on the information stated in the article. After thoroughly reading the article and their findings on their research, I understand that the only people who are looked after are those putting the money in their pockets by profiting from these slums.

Jessica & Laurence Norah Post author

July 17, 2019 at 11:16 am

Glad to see you are interested in the issue of slum tourism or poverty tourism.

The study we discussed and commented on was focused on a specific place in Egypt (and we have another article on a specific area in South Africa) and the way that poverty tourism or slum tourism is done in these places is different. So the pros and cons for each community are going to be a bit different and I would really look at a specific community of interest. Sometimes the community is involved in the tours and process, and sometimes they are not involved. Sometimes the proceeds (or part of them) go back to the community, sometimes they do not. Again, this all depends and is very different across the world and individual communities. If you are interested in a particular area, I would encourage you to seek out original research about that area and to look into tours offered there to get a better understanding of how they are run and the pros/cons for the local community.

Best, Jessica

Sarah Post author

December 29, 2015 at 7:57 am

Hi, I have stumbled across your blog as I research slum tourism as part of an MA in International Tourism Development. When I have some spare time I am looking forward to grabbing a cup of tea and reading much more! Your critical approach to this subject is refreshing and informative. thank you for the fantastic post.

Best wishes, Sarah, UK.

travelcats Post author

December 29, 2015 at 12:31 pm

Thanks Sarah for your nice comment, I’ve included a couple posts on the blog about poverty tourism. I would love to hear your thoughts about slum tourism after you do your research given it is part of your area of study! ~ Best, Jessica

H.H.H. Post author

December 25, 2013 at 4:44 am

Very interesting article! I studied psychology so your “Psychology of Travel” section has definitely stirred my interest! I have never seen it on any other travel blog, great idea! As for slum tourism, I have always felt quite negatively about it as I viewed it as voyeuristic and disrespectful and have always refused to participate in any such tours, but the research you quote shows that not all the aspects of it are as negative as I thought. I find it surprising that such a high percentage of slums inhabitants view it as something positive. Very thought provoking, thanks!

Merry Christmas! 🙂

December 25, 2013 at 9:38 pm

Yes, it is definitely an issue that most people see as a negative practice. However, I do believe there are ways that slum tourism can have positive effects on impoverished communities. Check out our latest article about slum tourism in South Africa.

Moustafa A. Mekawy Post author

December 22, 2013 at 11:58 pm

Dear Travelcats,

Thanks a lot for the critical review of my article. In addition, i would like to thank all of those who enriched your review.

As you said, slum tourism is a controversial topic and needs more contributions. Therefore, I welcome all constructive criticism and viewpoints. Regards, Moustafa A. Mekawy, the author

December 23, 2013 at 7:26 pm

Thank you very much for stopping by our blog and for your contribution to the research in this area!

M. Borgarbúi Post author

December 12, 2013 at 6:49 am

Slum tourism is not better than visiting zoo to watch wild animals in cages.

I don’t see anything wrong when people accidentally of by their own curiosity visits slum areas, but to take a guided tour is completely ridiculous and disrespectful for people living there. In most cases, especially in India I hardly believe that anyone in the slum earns any profit from it.

Anyway, it’s a great article. Looking forward to hear more about this subject.

Jessica Post author

December 12, 2013 at 8:30 pm

Hello, yes slum tourism is a very controversial issue, and you are correct in that some tour operators give very little back to the local people. However, many do believe it is possible to have sustainable tourism efforts that visit poor areas AND give back to the locals. It is just not an easy thing but I do believe it is possible. But as you say based on your experience in India, many tours may not be very responsible.

Also the research seems to indicate it is probably better for tourists to be with a local tour guide than just wandering around on their own out of curiosity. A good guide can help better ensure people respect cultural norms, respect the privacy of residents, and are made aware of local businesses.

I will be posting soon on slum tourism (known as township tourism) in South Africa and how it could be changed to be better for the local people.

Meredith Post author

September 9, 2013 at 9:23 pm

When we were in Rio we saw quite a few advertisements for favella tours. I had a very interesting conversation with the one of the hostel workers about the pros/cons of the tours. For the most part he seemed in favor of the practice (although he wasn’t from a favella himself). Apparently it’s helped with the government’s efforts to clean out the drugs and violence and to promote local artists/the economy. I certainly understand the point, but to me it still feels a little voyeuristic and exploitative. It just felt awkward to think of going, so maybe I missed out. Maybe I’ll reconsider in the future. Thanks for posting!

September 9, 2013 at 10:34 pm

Thanks Meredith for checking out this article. Yes, it’s such an interesting topic and I can certainly see both sides. I am hoping to post further on slum tourism soon as I think most people know very little about this practice and people generally have only heard one-sided arguments. I think that increasing awareness on this topic is important.

Darcy Post author

August 12, 2013 at 6:52 pm

This topic is really interesting. I’d never heard of slum tourism before. It’s certainly given me a lot to think about.

August 12, 2013 at 7:18 pm

Hopefully as more people become aware of slum tourism, the more it can either be prevented or done in a way that will help benefit the locals.

Melissa Post author

August 12, 2013 at 3:33 pm

Thank you for posting this fantastic research article. You’ve really captured both sides of the arguments and presented them in a concise and cohesive manner. This is such a slippery slope argument and I can definitely see the pros and cons from both sides. I feel that one of the problems with slum tourism is that it is just that: a business based on tourism. It seems that the slum tourism industry wouldn’t be as profitable if money was put back into the slums to improve the quality of life/living. I don’t know…it’s tricky. I would really love to read more articles on this topic.

August 12, 2013 at 3:54 pm

Glad you enjoyed it! It’s definitely a controversial issue. I hope to post another article in the next week or so that will talk about slum tourism from the tourist perspective.

Heather Post author

August 1, 2013 at 1:18 am

I really found this information to be quite interesting. I have had family who have done guided tours like you described in India and I had at the time thought they were alll bad and exploitative. Now I hsve a more mixed viewpoint as obviously such slum tourism has some great POTENTIAL benefits. I for one woukd love to see more articles like this on slum tourism. I really like your Psychology of Travel section.

August 1, 2013 at 7:34 am

Thanks Heather for your comment. Yes, this type of tourism definitely has both pros and cons and is not black or white/bad or good in my opinion. I am glad you found the article helpful and I would be happy to post more research data related to slum tourism soon. I have an article which examines the actual thoughts and opinions of those tourists who take the tours. I will summarize and post that over the next couple weeks. Keep checking back!

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Slum tourism: What is it and how does it work?

Disclaimer: Some posts on Tourism Teacher may contain affiliate links. If you appreciate this content, you can show your support by making a purchase through these links or by buying me a coffee . Thank you for your support!

Slum tourism is, believe it or not, a real type of tourism . Yep, you got that right- people go to slums whilst on holiday. But, why? In this article I will introduce you to the concept of slum tourism and tell you what it’s all about. Interested to learn more? Read on…

What is slum tourism?

Slum tourism definitions, what is white saviour syndrome, what does a slum tour involve, positive impacts of slum tourism, negative impacts of slum tourism, the ethics of slum tourism, slum tourism in south africa, slum tourism in brazil, slum tourism in india, slum tourism in indonesia, slum tourism in africa, slum tourism: conclusion, further reading.

Slum tourism is essentially when people visit slums – or, more widely, poverty stricken areas – as a form of tourism. This will generally be in a foreign country, one they are visiting as a tourist on holiday or on a business trip. It has also been referred to as ghetto tourism and poverty tourism.

In ‘ Theorizing Slum Tourism ’, researchers Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe described slum tourism as follows: 

‘ Slum tourism involves transforming poverty, squalor and violence into a tourism product. Drawing on both altruism and voyeurism, this form of tourism is a complex phenomenon that raises various questions concerning power, inequality and subjectivity. ‘

While this describes slum tourism, it doesn’t necessarily define what it actually is. Bob Ma of the University of Pennsylvania says this:

‘ Slum tourism is one of the fastest-growing niche tourism segments in the world, but it is also one of the most controversial. The United Nations defines a slum as, “a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security” (UN, 2007). Slum tourism is the organization of tours in these areas. As a niche segment, slum tourism is distinguished from developmental tourism, which is a broader term that includes tourism in any region that is undergoing development. ‘

Slum tourism as charity tourism

Some people engage in charity tourism – visiting slums or areas of high poverty with the intention of ‘making things better’. This is also sometimes called volunteer tourism . You can see this on Children In Need in the UK, for example, where we see videos of people heading to various underdeveloped areas of Africa to build schools or install wells for fresh water access etc. You can pay (a lot of) money to do this yourself through various organisations.

People do this as it is within human nature to want to help people who have less than we do. But it is also, of course, a chance to see somewhere new and explore a different culture . It can also be a great way to boost your CV. This means that taking part in slum tourism isn’t a purely selfless act, and this is why it can sometimes be frowned upon.

Studies show that slum tourism can have negative impacts on local communities – the use of unskilled labour, for example, and the taking of jobs that could ultimately have gone to local people. There is also usually no long term commitment involved, and of course there is the concept of white saviour syndrome.

The following extract comes from De-constructing the ‘White Saviour Syndrome’: A Manifestation of Neo-Imperialism by Felix Willuweit:

‘With the recent widespread of protests for black civil rights and against racism across the Western world, the topic of white prejudice has risen to the centre of public attention, of which one manifestation is the so-called ‘White Saviour Syndrome’.   Whether it is Ed Sheeran posing for ‘Comic Relief’ with a number of black children (Hinsliff, 2019), Madonna adopting children from Malawi (Hinsliff, 2019), or students going on adventures advertised for ‘young philanthropists’ within a multi-million dollar gap-year industry (Bandyopadhyay, 2019), numerous cases of altruistic acts of ‘White Saviours’ can be found throughout popular culture in the global North.’

Whereas these practices follow an altruistic narrative, they are commonly criticised as serving to satisfy a ‘White Saviour Syndrome’, the phenomenon in which a white person “guides people of colour from the margins to the mainstream with his or her own initiative and benevolence” which tends to render the people of colour “incapable of helping themselves” and disposes them of historical agency (Cammarota, 2011: 243-244).

So what does slum tourism involve? Many tour operators offer literal ‘slum tours’ as part of their packages, and of course you can visit slum areas alone as they are just parts of various areas. AfricanTrails.co.uk, for example, have a page discussing slum tours and they state that some of their packages do offer slum visits in Kenya, Uganda, Namibia and more.

Reality Tours and Travel are another company offering slum tours. As the company name suggests, they hope to offer a ‘realistic’ side to the places tourists visit. Based in India , a country with a lot of poverty, their slogan is ‘USING TOURISM TO CHANGE LIVES’. They say: Our ethical and educational Dharavi slum tours give visitors a unique glimpse into everyday life for many Mumbaikars while breaking down the negative stereotypes associated with slums. 80% of the profits from every tour are invested back into the community through the programs of our NGO, Reality Gives , and most of our guides are from the community.

Slum tourism has some positives to it. It gives people an insight into how poverty can affect people – humans are curious by nature, and if you are not living in poverty yourself, or never have, then it can be hard to imagine what it is really like. Visiting a slum whilst on holiday is like opening a window to another life, however briefly. 

It is also a chance to provide an income to people living in slums, if the tour involves some sort of opportunity to purchase goods or donate money. And with some tours, as you can see from Reality Tours and Travel above, the booking cost goes into improving the community.

Of course, there are negatives impacts associated with slum tourism too. The main one is that it treats those who live in slums as though they are in a zoo, dehumanising them so tourists can see what it’s like before swanning off back to their hotel and other luxuries. Some would go so far as to argue that they are a form of ‘ human zoo ‘. These tours portray poverty as something exotic, rather than a very real danger to the lives of the people impacted by it. It is also questionable how far the money trickles down. With people paying for organised tours, how sure can we be that real people are accessing the money?

Looking at the pros and cons it is clear that there is an ethical question surrounding slum tourism . People who live in poverty and live in slums are real people. We need to ask ourselves whether it is fair for them to be paraded around in front of us as part of an organised tour that we are paying a company to go on.

Some questions we should ask ourselves when looking to engage in slum tourism, courtesy of slumtourism.net, are:

• To what extent does slum tourism provide an income and positive visibility for people in deprived areas? 
• Which stakeholders are involved in slum tourism and who profits most? 
• How are guided tours organised or composed?  
• What are the geographical scopes of slum-tourism and which place does it occupy in the new mobility system? 
• Where does slum tourism fit in a globalised world of tourist consumption?

It is similar to visiting remote tribes, in a way, just as I explain in my article about the long neck tribe in Thailand . Tourists coming in from outside to view life in a slum through a western lens for a few minutes… does this paint a fair picture of slums?

Slum tourism destinations

There are various places around the world where slum tourism is prevalent. Here are some examples-

Slum tourism exists across South Africa . Here it is also known as township tourism – in SA, townships are the underdeveloped urban areas, generally populated by people of colour as a fall out from the Apartheid era. Apparently, around 25% of visitors to Cape Town engage in township tours. This city alone has around 40-50 township tour operators.

Slum tourism in Brazil equates to ‘favela tours’. Favelas are slums or shanty towns built on the outskirts of major cities across Brazil, and many people visit them for tourist purposes while on holiday in this beautiful country. Favelas are known to be dangerous areas. They are rife with crime, violence and drug dealing, but thousands of tourists every month visit these areas with curiosity.

As mentioned above when I spoke about Reality Tours and Travel, India is a prime spot for slum tourism due to the high levels of poverty here. The film Slumdog Millionaire put Indian slums onto the screens of millions of people, many of whom became keen to see it for themselves on a trip to India. There are around 15,000 people visiting the Dharavi slum each year alone.

Jakarta is home to a slum where families of 5 squeeze into ‘houses’ no bigger than the average western bathroom. They survive on pennies, and welcome tourists into their homes to see what it is like. Jakarta Hidden Tours is run by Ronnie. He’s a charity worker who donates half of his profits to the local community in an attempt to improve their lives.

Across Africa there are poor and underdeveloped communities. Slums tend to exist in Kenya and Uganda, for the most part. AfricanTrails say:

Going on an Africa slum tour is a great way to see what life is like for the majority of residents in a specific African town or city. Visitors can see how people live and the work they carry out in order to provide for their families. Slum tours are not purely filled with misery, the towns often have vibrant communities with shops, schools and market stalls.

I t is easy to forget that there are people living in these conditions, as it is not something you see every day, so for many, Africa slum tours are a real eye-opening experience. Visitors leave the area with the intention of donating to charities, helping those living in these places. Slum tours give the chance for tourists to interact with others from different backgrounds and see the true beauty of Africa and its people.

To conclude, slum tourism occurs around the world, and has done since Victorian times in England. Back then, the aristocracy would visit the capital’s poorest areas for voyeuristic and/or philanthropic purposes. And still it continues. People are, of course, eager to see another way of life. Often they believe that they are helping, and visiting people at their lowest can be a great way to remind you that really, you don’t have it all that bad. The ethics are questionable, but there are definitely ways you can visit a slum without it being a negative thing.

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Slum and Pro-Poor Tourism

Slum tourism is becoming increasingly popular amongst international travel visitors, but is it an ethical or socially acceptable travel experience many would argue no. here is some background on the controversial travel trend..

Posted on : 2020-02-05 09:43:22

Slum tourism: what is it?

The United Nations defines a slum as a ‘run down area of a city characterised by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security’.

The popularity of slum tourism has rapidly increased in recent years, with slums around the world seeing millions of visitors each year. While slum tourism is nothing new, it’s grown into a legitimate global industry. Tour operators now promote visits to places like the favelas of Rio, the barrios of Medellín, the townships of Cape Town and Johannesburg, the sprawling slums of Mumbai and New Delhi, and even the skid row areas of Detroit, LA and Berlin. A slum tour may contain a variety of components, from visits to schools, community projects and orphanages, to a jaunt around a local market. Some tours may even include a cookery lesson at an inhabitants home. Much of the time, a slum tour will focus on sites that show betterment to the community and include suggestions on how you can lend your support. Slums are often known as being vibrant and hectic areas, rife with small businesses and trade. Many tours will capitalise on these aspects, presenting a slum as an area of development and urban life. Slum tourism has the potential to be a contributor to economic and social growth in local communities. However, it’s often difficult to judge whether this type of tourism truly benefits impoverished areas. Who truly makes money from these tours? How do local people feel about moneyed tourists coming into their communities? These are key question that need considering.

Why is it so popular?

Post-Conflict

Post conflict, or ‘phoenix’ tourism, is tourism that takes place in a country after political unrest, war, or damaging weather events. Often, after a major conflict, policy makers will look for ways to rebuild the economy. One way this has been done is by development of tourism in poorer areas, including undocumented tours, small business enterprise development and simple accommodation startups.

An example of this can be seen in post-war Rwanda. Despite having a violent past, the country is known for its beautiful national parks and diverse wildlife. After the civil war ended, the government made a commitment to developing tourism within the country. They began utilising natural resources and provided wildlife tours, as well as opening hotels and accommodation in poorer areas. They implemented policies that improved the business environment and involved private sector investments and local guides. Small private tour operator – New Dawn Associates (NDA) established tours of Mayange village (part of the UN Millennium Villages project) and, Kigali’s poorer suburb. Both tours ensure that a fixed percentage of the benefits goes into a Community Development Fund and focus on sharing the country’s developmental challenges. This was successful because the government viewed tourism as an instrument to reduce poverty by directly involving local communities.

What are the benefits?

Economic benefits.

While controversial, there are many potential economic benefits to slum tourism. Increased foot traffic in communities where people make a living selling traditional crafts helps them to see a higher profit. In the Dhavari Slum, much of Mumbai’s waste paper and plastic is recycled to support the craft industries, and tourists are encouraged to buy local wares. When locals are directly involved in the tours being given, it provides them with a source of income and security. Some tour operators contribute profits directly into the slums as well. However, in comparison to what they are earning themselves, it may only be a very small fraction. This unfair distribution of profit means that some marginalised communities may never see the benefits of tourism in the area they call home.

Another matter of contention is that often slum tours are heavily associated with charity. Many operators will promote tours as a means of local development, promising that an excerpt of the money you give will end up going to community projects or local guides. Even so, it is doubtful that the money actually ends up in these places and if it does, it may not be a lot.

Increased Local Development

In 2018, over 1 billion people lived in slums or informal settlements (UN). Many of these areas have become infamous for being unsafe or having a reputation for crime, much like Medellín, Columbia or the ‘a murder capital’ as it was once called. Some might say that by visiting these slums, it helps to promote awareness and puts more marginalised communities on the map. It could increase local development and social mobility. But some would say these visits overly-romanticise and trivialise slums; places where there is overburdened infrastructure, poor sanitation, unplanned urbanisation and lack of access to clean water and waste services.

Often it is the case that many tourists feel uncomfortable ‘touring’ around somebody else’s home or neighborhood, especially when the dynamics of wealth and power are severely imbalanced.

Questions to ask

If you do want to visit a slum it is worth asking yourself some hard questions:

Who runs the slum tour?

Is it run by an external company?

Are they in partnership with those who live in the slum?

Do they have permission to be there?

Does the local community benefit?

The issue of slum tourism remains controversial, despite valid arguments on both sides. Ultimately, the only way for slum tourism to be ethical is if it directly involves and benefits the people living in these communities, and is for the purpose of education and acceptance, not only monetary gain.

Resource Center

Slum tourism: helping to fight poverty ...or voyeuristic exploitation?

Slum tourism – which involves touring marginalised and impoverished areas that tourists would normally never visit – is becoming increasingly popular in many locations around the world. Proponents argue that it can enable economic and social mobility for residents, and that it can also change the perspectives of those visiting. However, many critics see it as little more than voyeuristic classism with potentially damaging consequences, and few benefits for those who live in the slums. This report presents findings from desk-based research which sought to answer the following questions: What is slum tourism and why do people choose to visit slums? How can slum tourism benefit people in deprived areas? When is slum tourism voyeuristic and exploitative? Is it possible to define best practice principles in slum tourism?

Type of Publication

Author(s) / editor(s), year of publication.

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Urban bad, rural good?

The world’s largest slums include Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa (400,000 people); Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya (700,000); Dharavi in Mumbai, India (one million); Neza in Mexico (1.2 million); and Orangi Town in Karachi, Pakistan, which, with 2.4 million inhabitants, is the world’s largest slum. Despite the fact that many slums are as large as many cities that benefit from economies of scale, their inhabitants face a ‘poverty penalty’, paying more for basic services than those in richer areas. They remain exposed to hostile policy environments, social exclusion, climate change and inadequate public health systems. Only 20 per cent of Kibera has electricity and each latrine is shared by 50 shacks. Violence can be shocking: in Orangi Town, 77 per cent of women report having been raped.

So how to create real change? It used to be thought that the best method of limiting slums was to encourage people to stay in rural areas, but nowadays, most experts agree that incentivising people to remain in the countryside doesn’t work. The pull factor is just too strong. People will come to the city whether or not there are services to meet their needs.

If you try to forcibly block people from coming, evict them from slums, you just displace them to another part of the city. The only thing that it creates is bitterness and social division.

Julian Baskin, Principal Urban Advisor, Cities Alliance

‘Urbanisation has often been viewed as a negative process characterised by arguments to keep people in rural areas,’ says Minna Örnéus, senior programme specialist at the SIDA’s Unit for Global Cooperation on Environment . ‘But this view is misplaced – not to mention having questionable implications for people’s freedom of movement. 

‘Migrating to cities is attractive and, to some extent, reflects progress with development if it is managed the right way,’ she continues. ‘Look at Europe – we are really urbanised. People look for opportunities in cities that are lacking where they came from. Maybe they can’t support their whole family in a rural area. If you’re young, maybe you’re attracted by the urban lifestyle and promises of better-paid jobs.’

One impact of creating a hostile environment for migrants to cities is that slums are perceived as a bolt-on. This translates into a lack of access to urban amenities and social infrastructure, and the non-availability of community buildings, public spaces, sports facilities, schools, and health services. Housing will generally comprise poorly built, tightly packed concrete blocks.

‘Ten years ago, urbanisation was seen as a problem and symptomatic of a failure of rural development,’ says Julian Baskin, senior urban advisor at Cities Alliance, a UN agency. ‘This went as far as actively not investing in cities, in case it attracted people. But if you try to forcibly block people from coming, evict them from slums, you just displace them to another part of the city. The only thing it creates is bitterness and social division.’

Thinking has partly shifted because data built up over decades demonstrate a link between urbanisation and lower poverty rates. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, urban areas account for 70 per cent of global GDP. ‘The evidence shows that no nation can become a middle-income country (MIC) without urbanisation,’ says Baskin. ‘The moment Ghana hit a threshold of 50 per cent of its population being urbanised, it was also designated a MIC.’ This does not, however, mean the rural economy should be overlooked or discouraged. 

‘Urban and rural areas should not be polarised,’ Baskin argues. ‘They are mutually reinforcing. Good rural development depends on successful cities. The future lies in getting the cities right.’ 

Efforts to address this are increasingly reflected in a change in approach by policymakers: in the 21st century, slum upgrading programmes tend to be more encompassing and integrated, recognising the multi-faceted nature of poverty. Thinking has shifted to view slum communities as a vital part of the city and how it functions. Rather than being spatially excluded, they should be at the centre of city and national development. However, as a consequence, upgrading projects have become complex undertakings.  

Removing the stigma

Mistry recalls working in Delhi’s slums during the early 2000s, where he was struck by how the urban poor succeeded in organising themselves to secure their right to food. ‘That focus on rights [of all kinds] still exists today and can only succeed with much greater interaction between communities of the urban poor and local government,’ he says. ‘There is still a need for transforming the stigma that has existed around slum dwellers.’

Providing slums with basic municipal services is a way towards formalising them, and also a significant step towards local governments realising that the urban poor have a fundamental right to live in decent conditions.

Minna Örnéus, Senior Programme Specialist, Sida

Concrete policy changes towards slums have been slow to emerge, but another factor that has helped shift perspectives is a growing realisation among governments that informal urban economies, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, make a significant contribution to economic development and the functioning of cities (and up to 80 per cent of certain national economies in the developing world).

Slum communities should be at the centre of their city and national development,’ says a spokesperson for Muungano wa Wanavijiji, the Kenyan federation of slum dwellers (‘United Slum Dwellers’ in Kiswahili), a social movement of slum residents, urban poor, universities, civil society, the private sector and Nairobi’s county government. ‘Slum upgrading is possible, but only where communities themselves are at the centre of their development.’

Economic informality generates new employment in the developing world, even if there are downsides, such as high levels of under-employment, insecurity and low-income level. ‘Where this realisation exists, there is a bigger willingness to work with communities of the urban poor,’ says Örnéus, ‘to try to bring them into the formal system, which can support the proper functioning of a city through, for example, widening the tax base.’

Better planning, more rights

Experts also recognise that the rationale for planning in slums must be turned on its head. Traditionally, planning in cities in the developing world was based on European models of identifying land, buying and then planning and servicing it before building houses, all of which can take years. ‘In developing cities, urbanisation happens at an infinitely faster rate,’ says Baskin. 

Mistry puts it a little more bluntly, pointing to ‘archaic’ urban planning regulations and systems ‘that were originally established in colonial times, mainly to serve the colonial bureaucracy, with the aim of controlling local populations and which now serve the ruling elites.’

Early attempts to improve slums concentrated on the provision of water, sanitation and drainage infrastructure. Today, the best planning is instead about giving people security of tenure, ensuring that inhabitants live away from danger zones, such as flood lines of rivers, or are set back from slopes and landslides (in development circles, the strategic use of targeted public interventions to trigger large-scale transformation is sometimes referred to as ‘urban acupuncture’). 

Baskin points to an example from Luanda, where poorer inhabitants of the capital, weren’t given rights to their homes and so invested what little money they earned in cars – because there was no incentive to improve where they lived. ‘Why to argue for better sanitation or security if you could be moved on the next day?’ he says.

Making security of tenure work is possible but far from straightforward. In Uganda, local authorities in Mbale City recognised that existing conventional methods of land registration like surveying and titling were not flexible to the peculiar and complex context of rights in informal settlements and, perhaps more to the point, are unaffordable for the majority of slum dwellers. Instead, security of tenure was achieved through consultation – by participatory slum profiling (which simply means involving the local people in mapping out areas of action in their locality) and household enumerations (a field activity that creates a comprehensive list of all households within the cluster area). This work resulted in the development of two precinct neighbourhood plans and improved security for several slum dwellers who acquired tenure documents for their land rights. The scheme is now being rolled out in ten more municipalities across the country.

But Baskin insists that ‘land tenure does not have to be complex. It can be as simple as giving guarantees that people will not be forcibly evicted from their land. That makes a huge difference to what people will invest in.’ Detailed mapping of settlements can make a psychological as well as a practical difference, as it gives a name and address to every person. This, in turn, stirs a sense of citizenship.

Other innovations are being facilitated by technology and allow for the decentralisation of what would be huge infrastructure undertakings that might otherwise take years. These include ecological or biofuel toilets that can be used within a home and negate the need to build vast networks of sewers; and solar energy, which also negates the need for large electricity installations. 

Covid and slum improvements

The pandemic has thrown an unforgiving light on the hardships of slums. In the West, millions of people were able to stay at home, subsidised by their governments. This wasn’t available to slum dwellers in the developing world. According to  Cities Alliance,  ‘slums were not immediately accessible and the scale of needs was unmanageable’.

‘The biggest challenge was the recognition of how short-term the informal economy is within slum areas,’ says Julian Baskin, senior urban advisor at Cities Alliance. ‘People were told to stay at home; police tried to lock down markets. But it became apparent just how quickly people would begin to starve. People work in the day to buy food for the same night. It wasn’t workable.’ The long-term response, he argues, must be to invest in urban agriculture, so that food can be stockpiled and distributed in such circumstances.

According to the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency, ‘much of the progress made in the fight against poverty over many years has been rolled back by the pandemic’, but spokesperson Mistry says adaptations to best meet the Covid-related needs of communities can still go hand in hand with improving conditions. ‘SIDA has worked through partners such as Slum Dwellers International and Cities Alliance to install hand-washing stations, disseminate masks and create local small-scale health units’, which both mitigate Covid pressures and improve services.

Community cohesion

Infrastructure is self-evidently important, but what really makes a difference, says Baskin, is community organisation, which has a greater capacity to kick-start improvements. ‘You need people who can represent the community, forums that invest in dialogue. Even if people are poor, things will happen. If you don’t have that, then criminal elements step into the void.’

Örnéus agrees, adding: ‘It’s not just about housing and infrastructure, it’s also about empowering the urban poor and building their capacity to engage and be aware of their rights. The participation of slum dwellers is the key to a successful slum-upgrading programme.’ 

Örnéus stresses the importance of gradual upgrading and contrasts this with policies prevalent during the 1980s under which whole slum areas would be forcibly removed, the land cleared and, in effect, ‘retro-fitted’ with infrastructure. ‘Although in some places, the situation has improved, people are still forcibly evicted every year and millions are threatened with forced evictions.’

Nevertheless, there are good examples of approaches that both involve slum residents and view slums as an integral part of the city. In Nairobi, a project overseen by Muungano wa Wanavijij puts the emphasis on inclusivity: slums have been compartmentalised into 1,000 groups, each comprising some 100 people. Each slum group is autonomous and seeks to galvanise community efforts to improve living conditions. 

This community-based approach was applied to Mukuru, a vast, sprawling 243-hectare informal settlement in Nairobi. Mukuru was declared a special planning area, with priority and funding given for projects that enabled the slum to be improved and integrated into the city’s fabric. A resident was chosen to represent each group of households and thousands of people were asked for their views; 250 community mobilisers were engaged to raise awareness of the project. Residents were trained to collect data. Every latrine, water tap and electricity pole in the settlement was mapped. Among the outcomes has been the replacement of 3,800 filthy pit latrines. Now, 1,000 households have access to flushing toilets and running water. Mukuru is also Kenya’s pioneering social-housing project as the government has approved the construction of 13,000 new houses there.

Second cities

Directing rural migrants to secondary cities is another way in which thinking has shifted in recent years. ‘The primary cities have born the huge brunt of urbanisation and there’s little capacity to expand land; you get backlogs, they’re precarious,’ says Baskin. ‘Across Africa, we are seeing a big strategic shift to secondary cities.’ One advantage is that migrants can move to a city nearer to their rural origins, where the language may be the same as in their village. Should they lose their job or times get hard, they can return home and use their social networks to avoid being sucked into debt far from home.

The way the world is looking right now, urbanisation is taking place really rapidly, especially in developing countries. These countries are severely lacking the governance, capacity and resources to cope.

Yet most donors still focus on the bigger cities as it can be more difficult to work with secondary cities and implement improvements. ‘The megacities – Rio, Bombay, Delhi and the like – have community organisations that are much more developed and co-ordinated, which makes it easier to change perceptions there,’ says Mistry. ‘Secondary cities are seeing the same problems [that emerged in the largest cities] but don’t have the same resources as the bigger cities to meet the needs of their swelling populations.’ 

While planners and grassroots agencies know what is likely to work, progress can be painfully slow. Self-evidently, income and funding make a difference in outcomes for slum upgrading. Cities in developing nations typically have barely a quarter of the resources of those in a developed nation. Per capita spending in most African cities is US$50 per household. In Europe, the figure is US$2,100. ‘It would be interesting to see the impact on a Western European city of a 75 per cent cut in funding,’ says Baskin. ‘Many cities [in developing nations] pay salaries that are not competitive. You have top management, no middle management and a huge number of unskilled workers. The informal economy is huge.’

Avoiding gentrification

One potential consequence of slum upgrading is gentrification, the phenomenon seen across developed cities where a neglected area is improved to the extent that wealthier people move in and the original occupants are displaced. 

This was the risk facing Barrio 31 in Buenos Aires, a settlement situated downtown, close to affluent neighbourhoods. Between 2015 and 2019, the city provided 18 kilometres of basic infrastructure and services to the area, including sewers, drainage, water, public lighting and roads. It also renovated 26 public spaces, improved 1,700 housing units, constructed 1,200 new residences and provided three new public schools and three healthcare centres. 

The conditions were ripe for more affluent incomers to take advantage of these improvements. However, they’ve been kept at bay by a series of practical and legal measures. Land titles were given to residents with a subsidised 30-year mortgage. At 250 square metres, plot sizes are smaller than the minimum plot standard of the wider city and development rights were limited to the construction of properties with a maximum of three floors above ground level. In addition, new residents must pay three times the property tax. These measures also provided safeguards against slums slipping backwards because they prevented private landlords from buying up vacant land and then stimulating slum conditions by building unregulated structures for rent. 

Climate change

Another challenge is that slum areas are often perilously located. However, if you can get this right, slum upgrading can help address issues around climate change while also implementing sustainable-development priorities. ‘Climate change is already having disproportionate impacts in slum areas,’ says Örnéus. ‘Slums are often located in hazard-prone areas, on steep-sided hills or along floodplains, making them already prone to floods and landslides. Their location only worsens their vulnerability to climate change impacts. This is why governments have to pay special attention to how to mitigate climate risks in slum areas when they develop their adaptation action plans.’ 

Even so, climate change is likely to provide a brake on progress in slum upgrading. ‘I hope we don’t always have slums,’ says Örnéus. ‘But the way the world is looking right now, urbanisation is taking place really rapidly, especially in developing countries. These countries are severely lacking the governance, capacity and resources to cope.’

Örnéus stresses the importance of not generalising about what works and what doesn’t because ‘every city is different and everyone moving to a city has a different reason for doing so.’ There’s a necessity, she argues, for policymakers to remain agile in their thinking and to avoid slipping into old tropes that drop-in solutions will work everywhere.

Patience will be key, says Baskin, who’s optimistic that we’ll see meaningful, widespread change. ‘Incrementally, we will get improvements, more territorial interaction between urban and rural areas,’ he says. ‘The headwinds are going in the right direction but it isn’t going to happen overnight. We’re not going to suddenly end up with model visions of cities all over the developing world.’ 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the corporate policies or viewpoints of Cities Alliance, its members, or UNOPS.

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Bad buzz? Why 'slum tourism' is back in the spotlight on social media

This type of urban tourism essentially involves operators organizing guided tours of slums. debate is raging once again on twitter, about whether it's time to put an end to slum tours.

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Slum Tourism: Towards Inclusive Urbanism?

• First Online: 10 February 2022

Cite this chapter

• Yannan Ding 2  

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This chapter takes slum tourism as niche tourism and relates it to two cases of art-led chengzhongcun tourism in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Instead of retrieving moral critiques, it is argued that slum tourism is a niche tourism that actively engages the slum community. Slum tourism has the right to exploit this market niche as long as consent is gained from local communities. The Chinese case takes a trajectory that is different from some renowned cases in other countries. The situation and strategy could vary greatly and yet they share similar effects. In the search for able agencies in community development, the potentialities of slum tourists as the agents of inclusive development should not be overlooked. It offer a democratic approach complimentary to conventional power apparatuses. More comparative studies between China and other countries in the Global South are needed.

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Ding, Y. (2022). Slum Tourism: Towards Inclusive Urbanism?. In: Urban Informal Settlements. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9202-4_6

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Slum Tourism: What Is It, and Is It Okay?

Slum tourism, also sometimes referred to as "ghetto tourism," involves tourism to impoverished areas, particularly in India , Brazil, Kenya, and Indonesia. The purpose of slum tourism is to provide tourists the opportunity to see the “non-touristy” areas of a country or city.

While slum tourism has gained some international notoriety in recent years, it is not a new concept. In the mid-1800s, rich Londoners would travel to the squalid tenements of the East End. Early visits began under the guise of “charity,” but over the next few decades, the practice spread to the tenements of U.S. cities like New Yorkand Chicago . With demand, tour operators developed guides to tour these impoverished neighborhoods.

Slum tourism, or seeing how the other half lived, died off in the mid-1900s, but regained popularity in South Africa due to apartheid. This tourism, though, was driven by the oppressed Black South Africans who wanted the world to understand their plight. The success of the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" brought India’s poverty to the world’s attention and slum tourism expanded to cities like Dharavi , home to India’s largest slum.

Modern tourists want an authentic experience, not the white-washed tourist zones that were so popular in the 1980s. Slum tourism meets this desire, offering a look into the world beyond their personal experience.

Safety Concerns

Like it is in all areas of tourism, slum tourism can be safe, or not. When choosing a slum tour, guests should use due diligence to determine if a tour is licensed, has a good reputation on review sites and follows local guidelines.

For instance, Reality Tours and Travel , which was featured on PBS, takes 18,000 people on tours of Dharavi, India each year. The tours highlight the slum’s positives, such as its infrastructure of hospitals, banks and entertainment, and its negatives, such as the lack of housing space and bathrooms and mounds of garbage. The tour shows guests that not everyone has a middle-class home, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a vibrant life. Further, 80% of proceeds from the tours are pumped back into community improvement projects.

Unfortunately, other companies, taking on similar names and logos, offer “tours” that don’t showcase the positives and negatives but exploit the community. They don’t pump funds back into the community, either.

Because there is no standard for slum tour operators yet, tourists need to determine for themselves whether a particular tour company is acting as ethically and responsibly as it claims.

Brazil’s favelas , slum areas that are typically located on the outskirts of big cities like  São Paulo , draw 50,000 tourists each year. Rio de Janeiro has by far the most slum tours of any city in Brazil. Slum tourism of Brazil’s favelas is encouraged by the federal government. Tours provide an opportunity to understand that these hill communities are vibrant communities, not just drug-infested slums portrayed in movies. Trained tour guides drive tourists to the favela by van and then offer walking tours to highlight local entertainment, community centers, and even a meet with people who live there. Generally, photography is prohibited on slum tours preserving respect for the people who live there.

The government goals for touring favelas include:

• explaining the economy of a favela (employment, welfare, rental markets and more)
• highlighting the infrastructure of the favela (hospitals, shopping, banking, fashion, and entertainment)
• touring schools and community centers
• touring community projects
• interacting with the citizens and visits to their homes
• enjoying a meal at a local restaurant

While Brazil has carefully structured its program for slum tourism, concerns remain. Despite regulations and guidelines, some tourists take photos and share them on social media. Whether for shock value or in an effort to enlighten the world to the plight of people in slums, these photos can do more harm than good. Some tour operators, likewise, exploit tourists, claiming that their tours support local businesses without actually giving back to the community. Perhaps the greatest concern, though, is that when slum tourism goes wrong, real lives are impacted.

Responsible slum tourism depends on government guidelines, ethical tour operators, and considerate tourists. When these come together, tourists can have  safe travel experiences, gain a wider worldview and communities can benefit.​

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Slum tourism: good or bad?

Antonio scorza/afp a number of tour operators have begun leading curious tourists into some of the world’s most famous slums: soweto township, slums in kenya, brazil’s favelas, and the “homes” of india’s street children. the jury’s still out on whether the tours are perverse invasions of privacy or eye-opening experiences that will prompt action on ....

• South America

ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP

A number of tour operators have begun leading curious tourists into some of the world’s most famous slums: Soweto township , slums in Kenya , Brazil’s favelas , and the “homes” of India’s street children . The jury’s still out on whether the tours are perverse invasions of privacy or eye-opening experiences that will prompt action on the poverty agenda.

The best-known slums of all, Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling favelas , are even enticing permanent gringo residents . This isn’t so surprising, given that favela residents are a lot more middle-class than most Brazilians care to admit—about 15 percent according to the 1991 census. And this proportion is rising, due to a lack of affordable housing. The vibrancy of life in the favelas is felt more strongly outside Brazil than within it, thanks to cultural exports like samba music and the movie  City of God . Gentrification of the favelas is almost certain to help poor residents, as gringos support local restaurants and help upgrade infrastructure.

In traditional development circles, pro-poor tourism is about helping the poor market goods and services to foreigners, not marketing their own misery to the rich. My take: There’s room for tour operators who respect the poor and help the rest of us better understand their lifestyles. Who better to lead favela tours than favela residents? As I wrote last week , there are plenty of positive things happening in the slums that we would do well to understand. After all, the first step to helping the poor is to ask them what kind of help they want.

Christine Bowers is a consultant at the World Bank Group and the godmother of the Private Sector Development Blog . Writers from the PSDBlog will be contributing a weekly series of posts for Passport entitled “Fighting Poverty With Markets.”

For more on life in the favelas , Janice Perlman’s work is a great place to start. Also, check out this blog on squatter cities .

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Zornio: Colorado drivers are really bad. Chances are you’re one of them.

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Be honest: Are you one of Colorado’s many bad drivers? Before you say no, ask yourself these questions: Do you drive slowly in the left lane while others are forced to pass you on the right? Do you text while driving? Do you drive excessively fast or weave in and out of cars? Do you run yellow or even red lights? Do you illegally park in front of drop offs for your own convenience, thinking that hazard lights absolve you of entitled behavior? Now the really messy stuff. What about road rage? Do you tailgate or honk your horn aggressively? Do you yell or flip off other drivers? Have you cut off cyclists or pedestrians, driven high, coal rolled passersby or pulled out a gun?

According to surveys, these are all things Coloradans do, and it has long ranked us as some of the worst drivers in the nation. Here are a few recent stats to prove it. 

In 2022, the Colorado Department of Transportation highlighted a Forbes survey that cited us as the third highest state in the nation for road rage . Among the findings, 46% of Coloradans reported an experience with being “insulted or threatened by other drivers.”

In 2023, a similar survey revealed that 14.5% of Colorado drivers regularly encounter road rage, landing the state among the top third for overall aggressiveness on the road. Findings included 59.5% of people who reported being blocked from changing lanes, 63% being yelled at and 10% being forced off the road by another driver.

That same year, Colorado State Patrol cited over 3,000 road rage incidents in only two years, saying many led to the use of guns, knives and physical altercations. Some drivers are even shot.

Then there’s drugs and alcohol. According to CSP , 4,120 impaired driving citations were issued last year by CSP alone, with citations most often being issued in El Paso, Adams, Jefferson, Weld and Larimer counties. This horrifying data comes after a 2018 survey that revealed 69% of marijuana users reported driving high at least once, and some 27% reported driving high regularly.

There are also a record number of fatal crashes. In 2022, a 57% spike was marked in roadway deaths compared to the prior decade, with over one third of those deaths occurring among bicyclists and pedestrians. The highest rates of fatalities were found in El Paso County, followed by Adams and Denver.

☀ MORE IN OPINION

Opinion: colorado must prioritize students in how it funds schools, and current legislation can update 30-year-old formula, littwin: maybe trump should have been allowed to attend supreme court hearing on immunity, cartoon: peter moore proposes popular tourism options in the land that budgeting forgot..

Going further down the rabbit hole, Colorado’s poor roadway trends extend well beyond bad driving. In 2022, a Wallethub survey ranked the state low for everything from rush-hour traffic to car theft to auto-maintenance costs to road quality. Overall, this led to a dismal 44th placement nationwide, once again ranking Colorado among the worst states for driving. In other words, there’s pretty clear consensus on the issue, and this year isn’t looking any better.

So what gives, Colorado? Why are we so bad at transportation? 

It’s easy to blame bigger cars, bad roads or CDOT, but their fecal upkeep of highways isn’t the only problem. We’re the ones getting behind the wheel, meaning it’s our responsibility and our responsibility alone to follow the rules of the road. We all took a driver’s test at some point right? How many people have to die before we take it seriously?

It’s hard not to notice how the overall trend of more bad behavior on the road appears to correlate with more anger in the country at large. For example, surveys show that Americans have grown increasingly angry for years, with 84% of Americans expressing in 2019 that they were angrier now than in the prior decade. And given that particular survey was conducted well before the coronavirus came to our shores, there’s clearly more to the story than COVID-19. 

It might be political division.

On the whole, the U.S. is polarizing faster than other nations, and this divide is wreaking havoc on individuals and families. The end result is not good: Anger is up. Hate crimes are up. And 1 in 5 voters now say the divides have impacted their personal relationships. So is this it? Have the larger tolls of toxic politics finally trickled down so deeply that we can’t even drive alongside each other respectfully anymore? Certainly the presence of more anger and hate would explain the increased propensity for road rage and substance abuse. It’d also explain an increase in impatience, selfishness and entitlement. But if political fallout is the root of the problem, what does that mean for trying to fix it?

Regardless of why, for now the fact remains that Coloradans clearly need to be better drivers, and it starts with us as individuals. Because based on the stats, there’s a good chance that you, dear reader, are part of the problem. So the next time you’re on the road, ask yourself honestly what you can do differently to improve the trends. 

There’s no such thing as a perfect driver.

Trish Zornio is a scientist, lecturer and writer who has worked at some of the nation’s top universities and hospitals. She’s an avid rock climber and was a 2020 candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado. Trish can be found on Twitter @trish_zornio

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom.   Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy . Learn how to submit a column . Reach the opinion editor at [email protected] .

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Trish Zornio Opinion columnist

Trish Zornio was born in the mountains of rural northern New Hampshire and spent her teens and 20s traveling the U.S. and abroad in addition to formal studies, living in North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon, California, Colorado and for extended... More by Trish Zornio