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The 'cities without slums' initiative has resuscitated an old and dangerous term from the habitat vocabulary. Use of the word 'slum' will recreate many of the myths about poor people that years of careful research have discredited. The UN has employed the word in order to publicize the seriousness of urban problems and to improve its ability to attract funding with which to tackle the issue. But in using such an emotive word the UN risks opening a Pandora's box. The campaign implies that cities can actually rid themselves of slums, an idea that is wholly unachievable. The word is also dangerous because it confuses the physical problem of poor quality housing with the characteristics of the people living there. The UN knows that earlier research has rehabilitated most 'slum dwellers' but ignores the danger of conjuring up all of the old images. In the process, the campaign also offers an oblique invitation to governments to look for instant solutions to insoluble problems. Demagogic governments have always shown a willingness to demolish slums despite the fact that experience has shown that policy to be ineffective. I fear that the new campaign will encourage more to employ this foolish policy. Words need to be employed carefully. Copyright (c) 2007 The Author. Journal Compilation(c) 2007 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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Successful mass transit solutions are rare in poor cities. When they appear they are lauded across the globe and too often copied uncritically. The latest exemplar of such best practice is the 'Transmilenio' rapid bus system in Bogotá. The article describes its main characteristics and applauds the improvements that it has already brought to urban transport in Bogotá. Naturally, the system is not without its flaws and these need to be drawn to the attention of those who might copy the Bogotá example. This is particularly important at the present time when the jewel of Bogotá has come under surprisingly strong local criticism over its cost, its ownership structure, its decreasing effectiveness and, fundamentally, because it has failed to solve the transport chaos of Bogotá. There is a real danger that 'Transmilenio' will stagnate as its popularity declines and as demands for a metro increase. Given the strengths of the system that would be something of a disaster and, most certainly, not in the interests of the poor.

Self-help housing is clearly an 'architecture that works'. Owner-occupation is also a highly desired tenure among the Third World urban poor. Governments in most poor countries are encouraging self-help ownership. But what do poor households actually gain through ownership? Unlike the housing of the better off, consolidated self-help housing is seldom sold. If there is a limited market for this kind of property, capital appreciation must be limited and, therefore, the poor are likely to lose out relative to the rich. If the poor do not sell their consolidated self-help homes what do they do with them? Are homes merely to live in or do they have economic functions too? The author attempts to answer some of these questions with the aid of research on consolidated self-help suburbs in Bogota, Colombia. He broadly concludes that self-help ownership does not offer the same advantages in terms of capital appreciations as does ownership in higher income areas.