INSIGHT-Slumscapes: How the world’s five biggest slums are shaping their futures

*Click here for the full story. The full interactive multimedia experience can be found here.*

By Paola Totaro

LONDON, Oct 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As the United Nations prepares a 20-year plan to cope with the challenges of booming urbanization, residents of the world’s five biggest slums are battling to carve out a place in the cities of the future.

Home to more than 900 million people worldwide – or nearly one in every seven people – the U.N. says slums are emerging spontaneously as a “dominant and distinct type of settlement” in the 21st century.

Today one quarter of the world’s city dwellers live in slums – and they are there to stay.