A new push to clean up the world's slums

"There needs to be a far greater sense of urgency about this," says Professor Masters.

Cairo's Darb al-Ahmar district, its narrow alleys lined with teetering shacks, strewn with rotting garbage, and prowled by ruthless drug dealers, was until recently one of this city's most ghastly and disreputable slums.

Now the ancient neighborhood, home to 250,000 people, is a hive of activity. Community members wearing hard hats toil at construction sites, rebuilding their own homes and erecting a school, a landscaped park, and a community center.

"It's nice to finally have a steady job," says Sayeed Rushdi, as he surveys the rubble-strewn construction site that used to be his neighborhood. "And later, when my home is fixed, we will really feel how much this has helped us."

Neighborhood workshops that make ceramic tiles, carve wooden moldings, or forge metal door frames are doing a booming business, supplying materials the community needs to rebuild. The workmen have been trained in their various crafts by experts, and their tiny shops now boast modern machinery.

There are microcredit programs, vocational training classes, and even a new local choir. It's all part of a $45 million, seven-year project by the Aga Khan Development Network, aiming to breathe vitality into an urban slum and give residents there the tools they need for a better life.

"This project has allowed us to save the urban fabric of this historic neighborhood," says Mohamed el-Mikawi, the project manager. "More important, we are creating jobs and giving them a future."

It's the kind of holistic, costly, and complicated project experts say the world needs many more of.

Other community-driven projects have made a difference in small pockets around the globe: housing-development programs have produced hundreds of homes and jobs in Karachi, Pakistan; and Bangkok, Thailand. And a clean-toilets initiative in the slums of Bombay has created 500 maintenance jobs and provided residents a safer form of sanitation.

But more often, experts say, projects fall short - either they're too small in scope and funding to affect more than a handful of families, or government efforts to stamp out illegal squatter communities block real help from reaching the people who need it most.

Even the successful ones, like in the Darb al-Ahmar case, are terribly complex to coordinate - and to keep everyone happy.

"At first, no one wanted to contribute cash to the refurbishment of their homes," says architect Ayman Elgohary, of a plan where Darb al-Ahmar residents pay 20 to 80 percent of the cost to rebuild their residences. "Now that they see the results, everyone is fighting to get on the priority list."

And change can be jarring for some, especially when there are costs involved. "We had to pay 1700 pounds ($274) to fix this house, and look," cries Najib Attia, pointing at a tile on his new floor. "That one has a crack!"

His wife snorts, noting that the previous structure was about to collapse entirely, had no windows, running water or electricity. "Now we have windows and lights," she says. "It's much better than that old place."

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