The phrase "a sprawl of slums" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a large, often chaotic area characterized by numerous impoverished housing developments.
Example: "The city was marked by a sprawl of slums, highlighting the stark contrast between wealth and poverty."
Alternatives: "an expanse of shantytowns" or "a stretch of impoverished neighborhoods".
In Mumbai, itself a neat nutshell of India's extremes, this image is served on a platter: the shiny towers that rise from a sprawl of squalid slums, the two inevitably "jostling for space" in globalising India.
"The opposition doesn't care for the poor," said Neiva Montezuma, 50, a housewife in Petare, a sprawling patchwork of slums on Caracas's western flank, who said she voted for the president's slate of candidates.
Still, a stroll one afternoon last month through a sprawling patchwork of slums, Nordeste de Amaralina, where, Mr. Almeida said, officials had increased the police presence, the tenuous nature of crime-fighting policies was apparent.
"I am tired of Chávez treating the entire country as if it were his military barracks," said Heriberto González, 65, a carpenter, after he voted in Petare, a sprawling patchwork of slums here.
Instead, it caused the sprawl of slums and suburban commuters to live farther away, resulting in today's uncomfortably long, hot, and sweaty train journeys.
Mr. Chávez's announcement came at a crucial time for his government, with challengers winning ground last week in areas like Petare, a sprawling patchwork of slums here in Caracas.
Europe's biggest slum – around 10,000 migrants are squeezed into a sprawl of wasteland east of Calais – will be no more in a few weeks.
The city's new mayor, Aníbal Gaviria, spent an hour describing to me his dreams for burying a congested highway that runs through the middle of town, building an electric tram along the hillsides to stem the sprawl of the slums, adding a green belt of public buildings along the tram, rehabilitating the Medellín River and densifying the city center — smart, public-spirited, improvements.
The resettlement community itself was built along a regular grid, with blocks of small concrete houses laid out in meticulously straight lines, in marked contrast to the organic sprawl of urban slums.
In Canaan, a sprawling hillside slum home to hundreds of thousands of people, including many of those displaced from the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti nearly six years ago, voters sometimes had to travel miles to the nearest voting center.
