Planet of SlumsAccording to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory. Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt? Davis provides the first global overview of the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor. He surveys Hindu fundamentalism in Bombay, the Islamist resistance in Casablanca and Cairo, street gangs in Cape Town and San Salvador, Pentecostalism in Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro, and revolutionary populism in Caracas and La Paz.Planet of Slums ends with a provocative meditation on the "war on terrorism" as an incipient world war between the American empire and the new slum poor. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - HadriantheBlind - LibraryThingRead for class. This is utterly terrifying and damning. These slums are the exemplification of hell. I have seen some of these slums myself, and can confirm, if only to a minor degree, some of the ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - paperloverevolution - LibraryThingI'm not going to lie: this is dry. Really, really dry. I like dry, as a general rule, or at least it doesn't bother me - but this? Man. Maybe it's because the things he covers are so wrenchingly ... Read full review
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according Africa Alan Gilbert areas Asia Asian Bangalore barrios Beijing Bombay Breman Buenos Aires Cairo capital Caracas China city's colonial countryside crisis Delhi Developing Countries Devisch Dhaka economic employment Environment and Urbanisation Erhard Berner estimated evicted example families favelas forced formal gecekondu global growth homes huge human illegal income India industrial inequality informal sector infrastructure International Jakarta Karachi Kibera Kinshasa Kolkata labor Lagos Latin America Likewise live London low-income Manila meanwhile megacities Mexico City middle class migrants million Mumbai Nairobi neoliberal NGOs Oberai official peasants percent peri-urban periphery political projects rent rental researchers residents rural sanitation Sao Paulo SAPs Seabrook Settlements shanty shantytowns slum slum-dwellers social South sprawling squatters squatting street structural adjustment suburbs tenements tenure Third World Third World Cities toilets UN-HABITAT Urban Development urban land urban poor urban poverty villages women workers World Bank World Cities York