Slum tourism

Slum tourism, or ghetto tourism is a type of tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas. Originally focused on the slums of London and Manhattan in the 19th century, slum tourism is now becoming increasingly prominent in many places, including South Africa, India, Brazil, Kenya, Indonesia, Detroit, and others.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word slumming to 1884. In London, people visited slum neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch in order to observe life in this situation. By 1884 wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points area of the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives".

In the 1980s in South Africa, black residents organized township tours to educate the whites in local governments on how the black population lived. Such tours attracted international tourists, who wanted to learn more about apartheid.

In the mid-1990s, international tours began to be organized with destinations in the most disadvantaged areas of developing nations, often known as slums. They have grown in popularity, and are often run and advertised by professional companies. In Cape Town, South Africa, for example, upwards of 300,000 tourists visit the city each year to view the slums.

Prior to the release of Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, Mumbai was a slum tourist destination. The concept of slum tourism has recently started to gain more attention from media and academia alike. In December 2010 the first international conference on slum tourism was held in Bristol. A social network of people working in or with slum tourism has been set up.

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