The main policy on people living in slums involves resettling
them in public housing estates; more rarely does the policy
involve restructuring. Until quite recently, no differentiation
was made between urbanized and peripheral slums. Urban
policies never had the objective of improving slums or their
social conditions. Interventions tried either to get rid of
slums as obstacles to urban development or to minimize
their impacts on the urban landscape and on the city image.
In the past, reasons to ‘clean up’ slums and force their
inhabitants to reception sites have included: political or
security imperatives;