Emerging Networks of Organized Urban Poor: Restructuring the Engagement with Government towards the Inclusion of the Excluded

Aim of this article is to address the issue of citizen participation and democratic engagement within a specific area—slum upgrading—presenting and theoretically discussing the approach of an international network called Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), which represents member federations of urban poor and homeless groups from about 30 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The article addresses the model of intervention embraced by the network, the activities carried out, its philosophy, etc., mainly focusing on the way it envisions and pursues the engagement of local governments in upgrading slum dwellers living conditions. The basic idea within SDI is that the lack of participation by the urban poor has historically been one of the major obstacles to achieve real development: either the government or the donors’ agencies, in fact, usually treat the poor as beneficiaries of someone else’s actions, thus undervaluing their knowledge and skills. Radically opposing this view, SDI interprets its role not as an intermediary agency of slum dwellers in the engagement/negotiation with local governments but rather as an ‘‘enabling tool’’ of direct negotiation between the urban poor and the public institutions. SDI’s most relevant feature, in fact, is surely the genuine leading role assigned to the slum dwellers grassroots organizations.