Slums are man-made; therefore, they could be unmade. But the rules will be formed by people other than governments: the politician who urges a rent boycott; the property baron who assembles land and distributes plots for development; the industrialist ready to pollute the air and the water, but caring enough to let neighbors use his clinic and his borehole; the minor official with a flair for manipulating the administrative code for his people’s benefit. The rules of life and sustenance in the slums go beyond the statute book and the manual. In fact, it is not surprising that seemingly scientific methods of observation and analysis produce perplexing results. In many instances in the past, different methods of data collection gave different answers. The conflict between survey questionnaires and participatory methods of data collection is very apparent. There is also a problem with very localized case study approaches since they portray the special needs and preferences of a small community and draw no meaningful conclusions for the larger society of slum residents. The priorities indicated by the household survey (tenure, security, water supply and sanitation, and jobs) in a recent Kenyan study were rather different from those learned from group discussions (plot sizes, water, environment, and information/communications). Perceptions of need also varied according to gender, with women being more concerned about poor surroundings (smell, noise levels, insecurity, lack of water, and exposure to flooding) while men were more bothered by the physical hardware (poor housing and bad roads). Thus, family well-being, especially children’s welfare, comfort, and health, would seem to be uppermost in women’s minds.