In our world, one in eight people live in slums. In total, around a billion people live in slum conditions today. This not only amounts to a rather unacceptable contemporary reality but to one whose numbers are continuously swelling. In spite of great progress in improving slums and preventing their formation– represented by a decrease from 39 per cent to 30 per cent of urban population living in slums in developing countries between 2000 and 2014 – absolute numbers continue to grow and the slum challenge remains a critical factor for the persistence of poverty in the world, excluding fellow humans and citizens from the benefits of urbanisation and from fair and equal opportunities to attain individual and collective progress and prosperity.