Shanty town
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Shanty towns (sometimes called bidonvilles, or the academic term informal settlements) are units of irregular low-cost dwellings, usually on lands belonging to third parties, and most often located in the periphery of the cities. These dwellings are often assembled in a patch-work fashion from pieces of plywood, corrugated metal, sheets of plastic, and any other material that will provide cover.
Residences are almost always built without a license. They pose a fire hazard and are remarkable by their near total absence of numbered streets, sanitation networks, electricity, telephones, or plumbing. Shanty towns are mostly found in developing nations with an unequal distribution of wealth, such as South Africa (where they are often called squatter camps), the Philippines, Argentina (where they are referred to as villas miseria), Venezuela (where they are known as barrios), Brazil (where slums and shanty towns are known as favelas), Peru (where they are known as pueblos jóvenes) and Bulgaria (occupied mostly by marginalized gypsies). In some extreme cases, shanty towns can have populations approaching that of a city.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, shanty towns appeared in cities across the United States because of the massive unemployment. Some were nicknamed "Hoovervilles" because the residents blamed the economic conditions on then President Herbert Hoover, who did not believe in government interference in an attempt to end the depression.
The first recorded use of the word shanty, as meaning a crude dwelling, occurred in Ohio in 1820. It may have been derived from the French word chantier, meaning a building site. Alternatively, it could have been derived from the Irish sean tigh, meaning "old house" or from the Nahuatl word chantli "home".
Shanty towns are also sometimes called peace towns since shanti means peace in Hindi.
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