Millions and millions of people in urban slums around the world are waiting for an opportunity to build an effective business in generating good source of income. They also wish to have an opportunity to change their lives and to be able to work, to buy food, to send their children to school, and to stop being sick. A group of people, that eventually became good friends, in National Chengchi University while studying in the International Masters in Business Administration and the Executive Masters in Business Administration respectively, have decided to embark in an adventure that aim to impact in a positive way the lives of millions of slum dwellers worldwide through a social enterprise. They established a project called VERMIPOWER which intent to provide a source of income for slum dwellers as well as to enhance the living conditions global slum areas. Social enterprises are a profit generated business that looks for social, cultural, economic, and environmental outcomes. These enterprises are financially self-sufficient. The social enterprise that VERMIPOWER aspires to be, plan to have positive impacts on many factors within urban slums; from directly impacting people’s lives to helping the environment by utilizing elements from within the urban slums. The company is built on the idea that the urban slums have items that can be used for a resource recovery process. Red worms will be needed as well as food waste. Red worms are a perfect fertilizer producer when eating food waste in a process known as vermicomposting. Interesting enough, red worms, while producing vermicompost, reproduce at an accelerated rate providing two interesting sources of income for slum dwellers, both red worms and vermicompost. Vermicompost can be used in farms, gardens and red worms can be sold in bait shops, zoos, etc. As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the company will turn trash into treasure, literally. And with the help of third party corporations it will be possible as well to fulfill the ultimate goal, which is creating a source of income for millions of slum dwellers across the world.

This thesis seeks to review Urban Sustainability in cities of the Developing South within the broader spectrum of Sustainable Development. Notably, the Developing South has for many years struggled to embrace Sustainability in its general terms: in part, because of the fragile institutions that cannot be counted on to uphold sustainability in the truest sense of the word; and in part because of the numerous challenges that often distract any attempt to prioritize Sustainable Development. Sustainability then becomes an option in the midst of other options, rather than an option that should affect all other options. Narrowing it down further to matters urban makes it even stranger in a host of cities across the Developing South. It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine in depth the contextual challenges that have invariably stood in the way of Sustainable Development across the Developing South. While it may not be practically possible in a four-month study to offer outright solutions or recommendations that could address these challenges in entirety, this study nevertheless has endeavoured to stay true to the realities that are often ignored whenever challenges of Sustainable Development are mentioned on global platforms. Among these realities is the reality of slum presence in most cities of the Developing South that existentially complicates any equation for urban sustainability ever formulated to provide a way out or forward for these cities. State governments understand this too well, and so do Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and international organizations alike involved in the crusade for improved living conditions for city resident, and in particular slum residents. Yet the State governments have never been as resolute in their quest for slum free cities. The question then remains: exactly what are the sustainable approaches for this noble cause? While the State governments have over the years insisted on enforcing conventional approaches (that include forced evictions, relocations and/ or redevelopment); one international network, however, thinks and responds differently to slum situations. The network is Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI). It is considerably this network of slum dwellers and their undeniably innovative approach to urban sustainability and inclusivity that largely frames the direction and general content of this study. Specifically, the methodology adopted in the study is one of a Case study - which in this case is SDI; and two separate Cases, namely Railway Relocation Action Plan (RAP) in Nairobi, Kenya and slum Re-blocking project in Joe Slovo, Cape Town, South Africa, respectively - as typical cases that captures in large part the enormous contribution that SDI is making towards inclusive and sustainable cities in the Developing South. In the discussion part, however, the study introduces Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as a comparative methodology to SDI’s approach. SSM particularly benefits from LUMAS model and Social Learning – both key components that potentially reserve a dynamic capacity to enriching SDI’s approach as a future reference methodology for urban sustainability and inclusivity.

Submitted by JORGE JACOB FILHO (jorgejacob@gmail.com) on 2016-05-24T18:36:39Z No. of bitstreams: 2 ~$e price of the threat - dissertação 06.05 (completo).docx: 162 bytes, checksum: 2ae824f3602b738b79fd94cffe5d470f (MD5) Dissertação final para biblioteca 24.mai.pdf: 1505142 bytes, checksum: ed1c813b8dd0d5ad8dadcd26d9c6ebac (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by ÁUREA CORRÊA DA FONSECA CORRÊA DA FONSECA (aurea.fonseca@fgv.br) on 2016-06-03T12:36:21Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 ~$e price of the threat - dissertação 06.05 (completo).docx: 162 bytes, checksum: 2ae824f3602b738b79fd94cffe5d470f (MD5) Dissertação final para biblioteca 24.mai.pdf: 1505142 bytes, checksum: ed1c813b8dd0d5ad8dadcd26d9c6ebac (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2016-06-07T14:42:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 ~$e price of the threat - dissertação 06.05 (completo).docx: 162 bytes, checksum: 2ae824f3602b738b79fd94cffe5d470f (MD5) Dissertação final para biblioteca 24.mai.pdf: 1505142 bytes, checksum: ed1c813b8dd0d5ad8dadcd26d9c6ebac (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-07T14:42:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 ~$e price of the threat - dissertação 06.05 (completo).docx: 162 bytes, checksum: 2ae824f3602b738b79fd94cffe5d470f (MD5) Dissertação final para biblioteca 24.mai.pdf: 1505142 bytes, checksum: ed1c813b8dd0d5ad8dadcd26d9c6ebac (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-26 / In field experiments with subjects living either inside or outside Brazilian slums (n=955), we show that consumers living in slums are less price sensitive, in opposition with recent price sensitivity research. Comparing slum and non-slum dwellers, we found that negatively stereotyped consumers (e.g. slum dwellers) were more likely to pay higher amounts for friendlier customer service when facing social identity threats (SITs) in marketplaces such as banks. The mechanism which makes them less price sensitive is related to the perception of how other people evaluate their social groups, and we argue that they pay more because they are seeking identity-safe commercial relationships. This work, besides extending the literature in SITs, presents a perspective for the exchange between economics and psychology on price sensitivity, showing that consumers living in slums are willing to pay more to avoid possibly social identity threating experiences.

The study takes its point of departure in the urgent problem of slums that follow on the rapid urbanisation worldwide. Focusing on the small informal settlement of Kambi Moto in Nairobi, Kenya, the study tries to answer the question of how power can be worked out in slum upgrading – a way to change the physical environment of a slum without demolishing and rebuilding the whole settlement. The theoretical tool to answer this question is taken from Edward Soja’s reading of Henry Lefebvre in the concept Thirdspace – an extended and politicised way to look at space, where space is not only seen as a stage for historical and social processes, but as something that is shaping our thoughts and actions; a social space that includes and goes beyond the material Firstspace and the mental Secondspace. From a spatialized reading of history today’s situation – where 60 % of the population of Nairobi live in informal settlements – is traced back to the ideological structuring of space in the colonial cityplans. The informal settlements are established as a Thirdspace: both a negative outcome of the dominating Secondspace of the colonial administration and as a counterspace, where traditional ways of life could live on and where revolutionary movements could grow. The study then focus on how the two scales to view the city, the macro and the micro, are resolved in the Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), a global network of local federations that organizes slum dwellers. The network empowers the individual slum dweller in making him/her an actor in a peer to peer exchange, and also creates a social space for political struggle. This is manifested in Muungano wa Wanavijiji, a citywide movement for a collective struggle for spatial rights, empowering the slum dwellers in taking charge of the social production of human spatiality. In a case study of a slum upgrading effort in Kambi Moto the shifting of power from the government, international organisations and professionals to the lived Thirdspace of the habitants, as well as the internal power relations within the community, are looked at in a concrete situation.