A City without Slums!! Are you impressed?

[TeeKee]

A city without slums
Report by UN-Habitat says Singapore could serve as a template for other cities to develop.
By Shobana Kesava
SINGAPORE is the only city without slums, out of 245 around the world surveyed by a United Nations body.

The UN Habitat released its findings on Friday to mark the 63rd anniversary of the UN.

A UN Habitat's director said the achievement was one that should be studied and, if possible, replicated in other cities.

'There is about 5 to 6 per cent slums in more developed countries so to have zero incidence is an achievement worth celebrating,' said Professor Banji Oyeyinka, director of the monitoring and research division.

In Asia, where half the population lives in cities, a third of the people lives in slums, said the bi-annual State of the World's Cities 2008/2009 report.

It covered cities from Tokyo to New York, Seoul, Berlin, Cairo, Luanda, Beijing and Buenos Aires, and was based mainly on data from countries' national statistical offices.

This year's report focused on harmonious cities. An important factor was equity.

Ms Rasna Warah, who edited the report said Singapore was well within acceptable levels of equitable living, with the rich and the poor not as far apart in terms of their living conditions. Beijing topped the charts in this regard while cities in South Africa face the greatest disparities.

'We found equity reduces the likelihood of disatisfaction and social unrest,' she said.

The biggest factors contributing to sound city development were good governance and transport systems. Both were rated highly in Singapore.

Professor Banji said that such long term planning was necessary to achieve success in slum elimination.

'We need to move away from thinking about how to improve the lives of slum dwellers, to how to get people out of slums,' he said.

Slums were identified as areas where there was a lack of safe drinking water, sanitation, overcrowding durable housing materials and rights over tenure.

'Just for provision of clean water throughout a city, it would need ten years of consistently and effectively applied policies,' Prof Banji estimated.

To understand the best methods to eliminate slums needs to be shared globally, he invited researchers studying cities to collaborate with UN Habitat.

About 50 local academics, analysts and government officials involved in urban planning were at the launch of the report on Friday.

The next report will be released in 2010.

 

[bebo]

A city without slums

What about those jungle brothels?

 

[DIVISION1]

You should be.

 

[tonychat]

i am not. I rather have some slum, a little dirty and has total freedom.

 

[jerry]

No slums but there is ghetto

 

[eQuipment]

No slums but there is ghetto

where to find slums on an island prison facility?

 

[i_am_belle]

red dot - the only country without slums in SE Asia maybe ... but not in the whole world ...

northern europe, northern USA, Canada, NZ, Japan - also don't have slums what, unless trailer parks are considered slums ... and also it shouldnt mean that an abode without tap water supply is a slum, bcos in rural areas, ppl may draw water from wells/rivers ... but conditions are not overcrowded nor unhygienic ...

actually singapore is a CONCRETE SLUM ... overcrowded, sometimes unhygienic, and messy ... some of the smaller HDB flats look like GHETTO ...

 

[i_am_belle]

looks like Ah Loong's internet brigade has been here ... this article in ST 27/10/08 says it all - japan has slums too !! be grateful u live in HDB in singapore !

news stories abt life in singapore in the ST will always have a positive happy tone even if the article is abt the plight of the poor ... but articles abt other countries will have this sad pessimistic tone to them - eg. slums in japan, traffic jams in the UK, financial troubles in US ... this is how the ruling party psyche sinkees into giving them their 66.6% ... !

:p:o:(

TOKYO - IN ONE of the world's wealthiest nations, Junpei Murasawa is a poor man.
He skips meals to make ends meet. A bachelor, he lives in a tiny apartment in Tokyo, sharing a kitchen, toilet and shower with nine neighbours.
He doesn't have health insurance because he can't afford the premiums.

The 29-year-old labourer is one of a burgeoning class in Japan - the working poor.

The number of Japanese earning less than 2 million yen (S$29,541) a year surged 40 per cent from 2002 to 2006, the latest data available, the government says. They now number more than 10 million.

In a country that boasts the world's longest-living population, where young women with Louis Vuitton bags crowd the sidewalks, Mr Murasawa's is a voice of hopelessness and despair - a voice increasingly heard in Japan.

'Everyday I live in deep anxiety', said the soft-spoken temporary worker, making 90,000 yen a month by bagging purchases at a home improvement centre. 'When I think about my future, I get sleepless at night.'

The plight of such workers is likely to worsen as the global financial crisis ripples through the Japanese economy.

At the bottom of the economic food chain, Mr Murasawa and his cohorts will be the first to suffer.

The growth of the working poor - not seen in such numbers since Japan surged to wealth in the 1980s - has been a shock to a country that once prided itself on being a bastion of economic equality.

'It is unprecedented to see such a widening income gap in Japan,' said Professor Yoshio Sasajima, an economist at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo. 'Our society is definitely becoming a class society.'

The seeds of changes now wrenching Japanese society were planted in the burst of the so-called 'bubble economy' in the early 1990s.

As the Tokyo stock market tumbled, evaporating vast stores of wealth, corporations restructured by laying off workers. In the 2000s, that was followed by a round of free market reforms that widened the disparity between haves and have-nots.

A key to the growth of the working poor has been the explosion in temporary employment agencies, which allow corporations to take on labour without having to pay benefits - and then unload workers at will.

As part of market reforms, the government made it easier in 2004 for manufacturers to hire such labourers, whose number has since increased 40 per cent, hitting 1.33 million in 2007. About 40 per cent of temps are aged 25 to 34.

'Instead of hiring costly, full-time employees, companies are bringing in cheaper, part-time workers as part of their cost-cutting efforts,' said Professor Yasuyuki Iida, an economist at Komazawa University in Tokyo.

Another factor feeding the trend is the emergence of so-called 'freeters' - 20- and 30-somethings who have opted for low-paying jobs in services such as convenience stores rather than chasing the material benefits of corporate work.

The spike in the number of the working poor is already taking a toll on Japanese society.

More people are putting off marriage because of tight finances, exacerbating a declining fertility rate.

Part-time workers unable to afford rent often sleep in 24-hour Internet cafes to escape the streets. Some have stopped going to the doctor because they can't afford it.

Mr Murasawa is typical of the new class.

He rarely eats breakfast or lunch, and says his usual dinner is a bowl of instant noodles that he picks up - with the rest of his diet of cheap fast foods - at the local 100-yen shop.

Rent for his 64 square-foot, one-room apartment in Tokyo costs 35,000 yen a month.

Despite his poverty, Mr Murasawa doesn't qualify for government welfare payments - he makes too much.

Japan doles out help only to single people living in Tokyo who make less than 84,990 yen a month.

Mr Murasawa grew up poor in rural Yamaguchi prefecture, 780 kilometres west of Tokyo, where his parents ran a small vegetable shop.

After graduating from high school, he didn't have enough money to go to university, so he began working at the store.

Bored with that life, Mr Murasawa came to Tokyo two years ago in hope of landing a well-paying job. What he found instead was subsistence on a series of short-term labour contracts.

'Sometimes I ask myself what I'm living for,' Mr Murasawa said. To make ends meet, he's given up dining out, drinking, smoking, going to the movies or buying CDs, clothes and magazines.

'I've stopped being hopeful for the future. I've already given up getting married because I have no money to do so. Getting married is like a fairytale to me. It is utterly unrealistic', he said.

That hopelessness is spreading to pop culture.

The surprise runaway best-selling book of the year, for instance, is a Marxist novel written in 1929.

The Crab Factory Ship, by communist Takiji Kobayashi, chronicles hellish labour conditions of ship workers under a sadistic captain. The author was tortured to death by police in a Tokyo prison at age 29 in 1933.

The book has sold more than 500,000 copies since the beginning of the year, after the book's publisher, Shinchosha, linked the plight of the crab ship workers to that of the working poor in modern Japan in its advertising campaigns.

'The book must have struck a chord with the young working poor who feel that their lives are not getting any better no matter how hard they work', said Me Tsutomu Sasaki, a senior manager of Shinchosha. He estimated 30 per cent of the book's readers are men in their 20s.

Not everybody who drops into poverty stays there.

For 10 months in 2006, Ms Sanae Yamaguchi lived off a series of low-paying, short-term labour contracts.

'I was so miserable during that period because I always had to worry about money', the 26-year-old said.

After graduating college, she got a full-time job as an accountant at a wholesaler of electronic products in 2005 in Osaka, western Japan.

But 10 months later, she was let go. Like Mr Murasawa, Ms Yamaguchi came to Tokyo in early 2006 in search of a better job.

But she was only able to find temporary jobs, mostly as a clerk, living in a tiny apartment where she shared a kitchen, toilet and shower with 20 neighbours on the outskirts of Tokyo.

She earned around 100,000 yen a month, and paid 43,815 yen for rent. Mr Yamaguchi said she had to give up on having a TV set to save on electricity.

To her, the temporary employment route was a poverty trap.

'If you are a temp worker, you're always getting laid off, which means you don't acquire any professional skills', she said.

Ms Yamaguchi finally emerged from her troubles in early 2007, landing a solid full-time job as an accountant at a medical company in Tokyo.

She refused to divulge her salary, but said she can now dine out with her friends, buy clothes and cosmetics and live in her own apartment with a shower, toilet and kitchen.

But that old insecurity has stayed with her.

'Even though I have a good job now, I'm always worried that I could slip back to poverty anytime', Ms Yamaguchi said. 'There is no job security in Japan anymore.' -- AP

 

[DIVISION1]

But this is true. 1 in 7 are below the poverty line in Japan, today.

 

[Areopagus]

going by that criteria, I would think that significant numbers of Singaporeans are below the poverty line too!

 

[cass888]

i am not. I rather have some slum, a little dirty and has total freedom.

Please migrate then. I want no slums, no dirt and limitation on freedom which inconvenieces others. I and 66.6% of Singapore.

 

[makapaaa]

But this is true. 1 in 7 are below the poverty line in Japan, today.

And soon, 6 out 7 Sporns to live below poverty line?

http://www.singaporedemocrat.org/classic/news_display.php?id=203

Sharp rise in S'pore household debt
31 March 2003

Vikram Khanna
Business Times
28 March 2003

Liabilities hit 174% of income in 2000 against 118% in '95

(SINGAPORE) Borrowing by Singapore households has risen sharply since 1995, making the nation's household sector among the most heavily indebted in the world, relative to disposable income and GDP, a government study shows.

The Department of Statistics study - Wealth and Liabilities of Singapore Households - is the first to provide a detailed breakdown of the assets and liabilities of local households.
It shows that their financial liabilities soared from 118 per cent of personal disposable income in 1995 to 174 per cent in 2000. The latter figure is substantially higher than those for major economies such as the UK (116 per cent), Japan (100 per cent), the US (90 per cent) and France (54 per cent).
Relative to GDP, Singapore's total household-sector financial liabilities are also the highest, at 88 per cent. Moreover, during 1995-2000, these liabilities grew faster than in any other country covered in the study. And at the end of the period, financial liabilities per household were higher in Singapore than in the other countries.
The study attributes the rapid growth of Singapore's household debt to 'the sharp increase in public housing loans over the period', adding that it also reflects Singapore's high level (92 per cent) of home ownership, with about 85 per cent of the population living in public housing.
It shows that between 1995 and 2000, household liabilities for HDB loans doubled relative to personal disposable incomes and GDP. Private housing loans and personal and other loans also increased over the period, but not as fast.
The study's findings are similar to those in a recent report on the Singapore economy by US investment bank Goldman Sachs, which estimated that Singapore's household sector debt relative to disposable income had risen from 122 per cent in 1996 to 174 per cent at present.
In an interview with BT, the author of the Goldman study, Adam Le Mesurier, said: 'The important point to note is that in Singapore the debt to disposable income ratio has gone up while property prices have been falling - unlike in other countries like the UK and the US, where property prices have been rising.'
The Goldman study cautioned about the dangers of the 'high leverage' of Singapore's households, which 'hinders the ability of relative prices to adjust efficiently internally'.
In other words, partly because of this high leverage, prices of properties - and especially HDB properties - cannot be permitted to correct quickly because that might impact badly on household balance sheets and consequently, crimp consumer spending.
The Singapore government study shows that at the end of 2001, 48.2 per cent of the Singapore household sector's assets comprised property assets, and 72 per cent of the sector's liabilities were in mortgage loans.
It notes that this concentration of household assets and liabilities in residential properties and mortgages 'may present liquidity risk for households, as property assets are less liquid'.
The other key findings of the government study are that:
- At the end of 2001, 42 per cent of CPF funds were invested in property.
- The Singapore household sector's net wealth as a percentage of personal disposable income was 714 per cent at end 2000 - substantially higher than Japan (633 per cent), the UK (631 per cent), France (525 per cent) and the US (471 per cent).
However, as a percentage of GDP, net household wealth in Singapore was 362 per cent - a level closer to the other countries.
The net wealth of Singapore households - the difference between household assets and liabilities - declined by about $6 billion, or 1.1 per cent, to about $565 billion at the end of 2001 compared with the previous year, 'due largely to capital losses arising from the fall in equity prices, even as households continued to save'. Personal saving increased substantially, by 23 per cent to $19.5 billion at the end of 2001, compared with a year earlier. As at the end of 2000, 80 per cent of Singapore's household financial wealth was in 'less risky' traditional assets such as bank deposits, life insurance and pension funds. This proportion was about the same as in Japan, but was significantly higher than in Italy (31 per cent), the US (42 per cent) and France (55 per cent). In the latter group - especially Italy and the US - higher proportions of household financial assets were in shares and securities. The relatively low exposure of Singapore households to shares means 'that they would be less vulnerable to declines in equity prices', the study says.

 

[makapaaa]

Please migrate then. I want no slums, no dirt and limitation on freedom which inconvenieces others. I and 66.6% of Singapore.

The alternative is to awaken the 66% to kick out the Familee and its running dogs.

 

[cass888]

The alternative is to awaken the 66% to kick out the Familee and its running dogs.

Wake up. Singaporeans only care about their money. Minibonds, protest. MONGREL who bit his masters' hands LOUDHAILER chee soon juan's motherhood statements, "What is that ah? Can eat or not?"

The 66.6% would rather kick you out. Together with the real running dogs of the reCHEEme of the dog himself the MONGREL who bit his masters' hands LOUDHAILER chee soon juan.