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 non-government organizations in poorer neighbourhoods. By 1983, some 223 organizations had been formed by residents in low-income areas, plus 135 youth organizations and 99 women's groups. In this way governments can become partners and sponsors of the people who are the main builders of their cities.

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4. Housing and Services for the Poor
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47. In most developing-world cities, there is little low-cost housing. Generally those on low incomes either rent rooms – whether in tenement or cheap boarding-houses, or in someone else's house or shack – or they build or buy a house or shack in an illegal settlement. There are many Kinds and degrees of illegality, and these influence the extent to which governments tolerate the existence of such settlements, or even provide them with public services and facilities.

48. Whatever form it takes, low-income accommodation generally shares three characteristics. First, it has inadequate or no infrastructure and services – including piped water, sewers, or other means of hygienically disposing of human wastes. Second. people live in crowded and cramped conditions under which communicable diseases can flourish, particularly when malnutritlon lowers resistance. Third, poor people usually build on land ill-suited for human habitation: floodplains, dusty deserts, hills subject to landslide, or next to polluting industries. They choose these sites because the land's low commercial value means they stand a better chance of not being evicted,

49. Landownership structures and the inability or unwillingness of governments to intervene in these structures are perhaps the /…