Shanty town

A shanty town or squatter area is a settlement of improvised housing, called shanties or shacks, made of plywood, corrugated metal, sheets of plastic, and cardboard boxes. Such settlements are usually found on the periphery of cities, in public parks, or near railroad tracks, rivers, lagoons or city trash dump sites. Sometimes called a squatter, informal or spontaneous settlement, a typical shanty town often lacks proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity, hygienic streets, or other basic human necessities.

Shanty towns are mostly found in developing nations, but also in some parts of developed nations.

Shanty is probably from Canadian French chantier, a winter station established for the organization of lumberjacks.

Another possible derivation is from the Irish language sean tí meaning old house.

Hutment means an "encampment of huts". When the term is used by the military, it means "temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers". The term is also a synonym for shanty town, particularly in developing countries.

Since construction is informal and unguided by urban planning, there is typically no formal street grid, house numbers, or named streets. Such settlements also lack some or all basic public services such as a sewage network, electricity, safe running water, rain water drainage, garbage removal, access to public transport, or insect and disease control services. Even if these resources are present, they are likely to be disorganized, unreliable, and poorly maintained. Shanty towns also tend to lack basic services present in more formally organized settlements, including policing, mail delivery, medical services, and fire fighting. Fires are a particular danger for shanty towns not only for the lack of fire fighting stations and the difficulty fire trucks have traversing the settlement in the absence of formal street grids, but also because of the high density of buildings and flammability of materials used in construction. A sweeping fire on the hills of Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong, in late 1953 left 53,000 dwellers homeless, prompting the colonial government to institute a resettlement estate system.

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