Pavement dwellers refers to

informal housing Informal housing or informal settlement can include any form of housing, shelter, or settlement (or lack thereof) which is illegal, falls outside of government control or regulation, or is not afforded protection by the state. As such, the inform ...

built on the footpaths/pavements of city streets. The structures use the walls or fences which separate properties from the pavement and street outside. Materials include cloth, corrugated iron, cardboard, wood, plastic, and sometimes also bricks or cement.

Mumbai

According to Sheela Patel of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC), pavement dwellers are primarily first generation migrants who moved to

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

as early as the 1940s, and who have lived on the pavement of public roadways ever since. They are completely invisible as far as local, state, and national policies are concerned. People who sleep on or near pavements often pay to keep their belongings in shops, kiosks, or other buildings. SPARC conducted a study in 1985 called '' We the Invisible'' based on a census of about 6,000 households. It showed approximately half of the pavement dwellers to be from the poorest districts in the state of Maharashtra, with the other half from the poorest parts of wider

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. Many came as victims of

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

s, religious persecution or riots. Others came as a result of a complete breakdown in their livelihoods where they had been living. Pavement dwellers migrate to Mumbai hoping to capitalize on the wealth and job opportunities that the city offers. They are typically forward-thinking, seeking to build lives in the city that give the next generation better opportunities than would have been possible in the village.

1985 eviction crisis

In 1985, the Supreme Court of India granted the

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC; IAST: ), also known as the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), is the governing civic body of Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra. It is India's richest municipal corporation. The BMC ...

authority to demolish household structures on the sidewalks of Mumbai. With the aid of SPARC, the rights of Mumbai's pavement dwellers were recognised and coexistence was successfully negotiated.

South Africa

The

Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers Symphony Way Informal Settlement was a small community of pavement dwellers (shack dwellers who live on the pavement) that lived on Symphony Way, a main road in Delft, South Africa, from February 2008 until late 2009. They were a group of famili ...

were a group of evicted families who lived on a main road in Delft,

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

, from February 2008 till late 2009, until they were evicted by court order to the

Blikkiesdorp Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area in Delft, Cape Town, better known by its nickname Blikkiesdorp, is a relocation camp made-up of corrugated iron shacks.

resettlement zone.

Paris

Following the eviction of the Calais Jungle in 2016, African migrants began living on the pavements of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. The encampments would grow over a period of weeks and the police would evict them.

References

{{Commons category, Slums in Mumbai Homelessness People from Mumbai Slums in India Squats Squats in South Africa Squats in France Squatting in India