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slum |
Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.45 sec. |
slumDensely populated area of substandard housing, usually in a city, characterized by unsanitary conditions and social disorganization. Rapid industrialization in 19th-century Europe was accompanied by rapid population growth and the concentration of working-class people in overcrowded, poorly built housing. England passed the first legislation for building low-income housing to certain minimum standards in 1851; laws for slum clearance were first enacted in 1868. In the U.S., slum development coincided with the arrival of large numbers of immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; laws concerning adequate ventilation, fire protection, and sanitation in urban housing were passed in the late 1800s. In the 20th century government and private organizations built low-income housing and appropriated funds for urban renewal and offered low-interest home loans. Shantytowns, which often grow up around urban centres in developing countries as rural populations migrate to the cities in search of employment, are one type of slum for which alleviating measures have yet to be successfully introduced. See also urban planning. slum a squalid section of a city, characterized by inferior living conditions and usually by overcrowding How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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Mrs Jarley was not proof against the poet's insinuating manner, and Mr Slum entered the order in a small note-book as a three-and-sixpenny one. A gipsy encampment to-day is little more than a moving slum, a scab of squalor on the fair face of the countryside. Without arguing this matter of my general reputation, accepting it at its current face value, let me add that I have indeed lived life in a very rough school and have seen more than the average man's share of inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle and the prison, the slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar-house, to the battlefield and the military hospital. |
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