With a third of the global urban population already living in Dickensian slums, at least half under the age of twenty, Mike Davis explores the threat of disease, of forced settlement on hazardous terrains, and of state violence on huge populations. He shows also how poverty not only grew massively in the 1990s but how the gap between rich and poor countries expanded and how women and minorities fell further behind. Surveying the new urban poor from Bombay to Cairo, Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, Mike Davis argues that this ...
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With a third of the global urban population already living in Dickensian slums, at least half under the age of twenty, Mike Davis explores the threat of disease, of forced settlement on hazardous terrains, and of state violence on huge populations. He shows also how poverty not only grew massively in the 1990s but how the gap between rich and poor countries expanded and how women and minorities fell further behind. Surveying the new urban poor from Bombay to Cairo, Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, Mike Davis argues that this enormous population of marginalised labourers is not an industrious beehive of ambitious entrepreneurs but a stagnant ferment of extreme Darwinian competition which threatens to overflow the shanty-towns, and swamp the homes and businesses of the urban rich.
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Add this copy of Planet of Slums to cart. $1.89, good condition, Sold by Orion Tech rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Arlington, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Verso.
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Add this copy of Planet of Slums to cart. $2.29, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Verso.
Add this copy of Planet of Slums to cart. $2.29, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Verso.
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Fair. This book is a well used but readable copy. Integrity of the book is still intact with no missing pages. The dust jacket is missing. May have notes or highlighting. Cover image on the book may vary from photo. Ships out quickly in a secure plastic mailer.
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Good. Good condition. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains. Bundled media such as CDs, DVDs, floppy disks or access codes may not be included.
Davis gives us here a global catalogue of contemporary urban poverty as it affects upwards of 3 billion of the world's peoples. In an increasingly urbanising world, the mass migrations to the megacities of Africa, Asia and Latin America have overwhelmed the abilities of their nations' to provide either sufficient formal employment or necessary infrastructures of housing, public health (sanitation, clean water) and environmentally secure residential areas. Such a decoupling of urbanisation from its traditional base of industrialisation is producing a world surplus population 'warehoused' in slum areas of the cities of the South. Here they face immense problems in their struggles for daily survival. Economic activity increasingly takes the form of an improvisation, outside the formal sector to secure a subsistence niche. Housing is precariously achieved in unsafe locations - from swamplands to rubbish dumps - where fire, toxic waste and landslides are ever present threats. Tenure here is equally uncertain, slum dwellers having to settle for illegal subdivisions of existing titled lands or 'infill' developments in already cramped spaces. Public health cedes to overcrowding, polluted water, and few sanitation measures. The picture is undoubtedly bleak - and Davis leaves us in no doubt that the post-colonial state can not provide any significant solution to the range of problems facing the modern slum dweller. As for other political solutions, he is deferring any discussion of the political potential of the slum millions to a subsequent investigation.
