From the forward: "UN-HABITAT has been assigned the responsibility to assist United Nations Members States in monitoring
and eventually attaining the global “Cities without Slums” target of improving the lives of at least
100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. To proceed with this task, UN-HABITAT has consulted a
number of experts to develop generic and operational definitions of terms and concepts related to
urban poverty and slums for use by National Governments, policy makers and their advisors, planners,
local authorities, statisticians, survey specialists and the academics. This guide offers not only the definitions
but also a hierarchy of indicators at the operational level and specific ways to measure them." Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, UN-HABITAT, Nairobi, May 2003. (PDF file, 18 pages)