Planet of slums

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 26, 2004, Pages 5-34

  Davis, Mike ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 1642413176     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (124)

1. UN Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects, the 2001 Revision, New York 2002.
2. Population Information Program, Population Reports: Meeting the Urban Challenge, vol. XXX, no. 4, Fall 2002, p. 1.
3. Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sandeson and Sergei Scherbov, 'Doubling of world population unlikely', Nature 387, 19 June 1997, pp. 803-4. However the populations of sub-Saharan Africa will triple and India, double.
4. Global Urban Observatory, Slums of the World: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium?, New York 2003, p. 10.
5. Although the velocity of global urbanization is not in doubt, the growth rates of specific cities may brake abruptly as they encounter the frictions of size and congestion. A famous instance of such a 'polarization reversal' is Mexico City: widely predicted to achieve a population of 25 million during the 19905 (the current population is probably about 18 or 19 million). See Yue-man Yeung, 'Geography in an age of mega-cities', International Social Sciences Journal 151, 1997, p. 93.
6. For a perspective, see Yue-Man Yeung, 'Viewpoint Integration of the Pearl River Delta', International Development Planning Review, vol. 25, no. 3, 2003.
7. Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia 1998 Yearbook, p. 63.
8. UN-Habitat, The Challenge of the Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, London 2003, p. 3.
9. Gregory Guldin, What's a Peasant to Do? Village Becoming Town in Southern China, Boulder, co 2001, p. 13.
10. Miguel Villa and Jorge Rodriguez, 'Demographic trends in Latin America's metropolises, 1950-1990', in Alan Gilbert, ed., The Mega-City in Latin America, Tokyo 1996, pp. 33-4.
11. Guldin, Peasant, pp. 14, 17. See also Jing Neng Li, 'Structural and Spatial Economic changes and their Effects on Recent Urbanization in China', in Gavin Jones and Pravin Visaria, eds, Urbanization in Large Developing Countries, Oxford 1997, p. 44.
12. Guldin, Peasant, pp. 14, 17. See also Jing Neng Li, 'Structural and Spatial Economic changes and their Effects on Recent Urbanization in China', in Gavin Jones and Pravin Visaria, eds, Urbanization in Large Developing Countries, Oxford 1997, p. 44.
13. See T. McGee, 'The Emergence of Desakota Regions in Asia: Expanding a Hypothesis', in Northon Ginsburg, Bruce Koppell and T. McGee, eds, The Extended Metropolis: Settlement Transition in Asia, Honolulu 1991.
14. Yue-man Yeung and Fu-chen Lo, 'Global restructuring and emerging urban corridors in Pacific Asia', in Lo and Yeung, eds, Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia, Tokyo 1996, p. 41.
15. Guldin, Peasant, p. 13.
16. Wang Mengkui, advisor to the State Council, quoted in the Financial Times, 26 November 2003. Since the market reforms of the late 19703 it is estimated that almost 300 million Chinese have moved from rural areas to cities. Another 250 or 300 million are expected to follow in coming decades. (Financial Times, 16 December 2003.)
17. Wang Mengkui, advisor to the State Council, quoted in the Financial Times, 26 November 2003. Since the market reforms of the late 19703 it is estimated that almost 300 million Chinese have moved from rural areas to cities. Another 250 or 300 million are expected to follow in coming decades. (Financial Times, 16 December 2003.)
18. Josef Gugler, 'Introduction - II. Rural-Urban Migration', in Gugler, ed., Cities in the Developing World: Issues, Theory and Policy, Oxford 1997, p. 43. For a contrarian view that disputes generally accepted World Bank and UN data on continuing high rates of urbanization during the 1980s, see Deborah Potts, 'Urban lives: Adopting new strategies and adapting rural links', in Carole Rakodi, ed., The Urban Challenge in Africa: Growth and Management of Its Large Cities, Tokyo 1997, pp. 463-73.
19. Josef Gugler, 'Introduction - II. Rural-Urban Migration', in Gugler, ed., Cities in the Developing World: Issues, Theory and Policy, Oxford 1997, p. 43. For a contrarian view that disputes generally accepted World Bank and UN data on continuing high rates of urbanization during the 1980s, see Deborah Potts, 'Urban lives: Adopting new strategies and adapting rural links', in Carole Rakodi, ed., The Urban Challenge in Africa: Growth and Management of Its Large Cities, Tokyo 1997, pp. 463-73.
20. David Simon, 'Urbanization, globalization and economic crisis in Africa', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, p. 95.
21. See Josef Gugler, 'Overurbanization Reconsidered', in Gugler, Cities in the Developing World, pp. 114-23. By contrast, the former command economies of the Soviet Union and Maoist China restricted in-migration to cities and thus tended toward 'under-urbanization'.
22. Foreword to Jacinta Prunty, Dublin Slums 1800-1925: A Study in Urban Geography, Dublin 1998, p. ix.
23. 'Thus, it appears that for low income countries, a significant fall in urban incomes may not necessarily produce in the short term a decline in rural-urban migration.' Nigel Harris, 'Urbanization, Economic Development and Policy in Developing Countries', Habitat International, vol. 14, no. 4, 1990, p. 21-2.
24. On Third World urbanization and the global debt crisis, see York Bradshaw and Rita Noonan, 'Urbanization, Economic Growth, and Women's Labour-Force Participation', in Gugler, Cities in the Developing World, pp. 9-10.
25. Slums: for publication details, see footnote 8.
26. Branko Milanovic, True world income distribution 1988 and 1993, World Bank, New York 1999. Milanovic and his colleague Schlomo Yitzhaki are the first to calculate world income distribution based on the household survey data from individual countries.
27. UNICEF, to be fair, has criticized the IMF for years, pointing out that 'hundreds of thousands of the developing world's children have given their lives to pay their countries' debts'. See The State of the World's Children, Oxford 1989, p. 30.
28. Slums, p. 6.
29. Such a study, one supposes, would survey, at one end, urban hazards and infrastructural breakdown and, at the other, the impact of climate change on agriculture and migration.
30. Prunty, Dublin Slums, p. 2.
31. Slums, p. 12.
32. Slums, pp. 2-3.
33. See A. Oberai, Population Growth, Employment and Poverty in Third World Mega-Cities, New York 1993, p. 28. In 1980 the 0-19 cohort of big OECD cities was from 19 to 28 per cent of the population; of Third World mega-cities, 40 to 53 per cent.
34. Slums of the World, pp. 33-4.
35. Simon, 'Urbanization in Africa', p. 103; and Jean-Luc Piermay, 'Kinshasa: A reprieved mega-city?', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, p. 236.
36. Simon, 'Urbanization in Africa', p. 103; and Jean-Luc Piermay, 'Kinshasa: A reprieved mega-city?', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, p. 236.
37. Sabir Ali, 'Squatters: Slums within Slums', in Prodipto Roy and Shangon Das Gupta, eds, Urbanization and Slums, Delhi 1995, pp. 55-9.
38. Jonathan Rigg, Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition, London 1991, p. 143.
39. Slums of the World, p. 34
40. Salah El-Shakhs, 'Toward appropriate urban development policy in emerging mega-cities in Africa', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, p. 516.
41. Daily Times of Nigeria, 20 October 2003. Lagos has grown more explosively than any large Third World city except for Dhaka. In 1950 it had only 300,000 inhabitants but then grew almost 10 per cent per annum until 1980, when it slowed to about 6% - still a very rapid rate - during the years of structural readjustment.
42. Amy Otchet, 'Lagos: the survival of the determined', UNESCO Courier, June 1999.
43. Slums, p. 50.
44. Winter King, 'Illegal Settlements and the Impact of Titling Programmes,' Harvard Law Review, vol. 44, no. 2, September 2003, p. 471.
45. United Nations, Karachi, Population Growth and Policies in Megacities series, New York 1988, p. 19.
46. The absence of infrastructure, however, does create innumerable niches for informal workers: selling water, carting nightsoil, recycling trash, delivering propane and so on.
47. World Resources Institute, World Resources: 1996-97, Oxford 1996, p. 21.
48. Slums of the World, p. 25.
49. Slums, p. 99.
50. Slums of the World, p. 12.
51. For an exemplary case-study, see Greg Bankoff, 'Constructing Vulnerability: The Historical, Natural and Social Generation of Flooding in Metropolitan Manila', Disasters, vol. 27, no. 3, 2003, pp. 224-38.
52. Otchet, 'Lagos'; and Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power and Social Networks within China's Floating Population, Stanford 2001; Alan Gilbert, The Latin American City, New York 1998, p. 16.
53. Otchet, 'Lagos'; and Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power and Social Networks within China's Floating Population, Stanford 2001; Alan Gilbert, The Latin American City, New York 1998, p. 16.
54. Otchet, 'Lagos'; and Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power and Social Networks within China's Floating Population, Stanford 2001; Alan Gilbert, The Latin American City, New York 1998, p. 16.
55. Martin Ravallion, On the urbanization of poverty, World Bank paper, 2001.
56. Slums, p. 28.
57. Slums of the World, p. 12.
58. Fidelis Odun Balogun, Adjusted Lives: stories of structural adjustment, Trenton, NJ 1995, p. 80.
59. The Challenge of Slums, p. 30. 'Urban bias' theorists, like Michael Lipton who invented the term in 1977, argue that agriculture tends to be undercapitalized in developing countries, and cities relatively 'overurbanized', because fiscal and financial policies favour urban elites and distort investment flows. At the limit, cities are vampires of the countryside. See Lipton, Why Poor People Stay Poor: A Study of Urban Bias in World Development, Cambridge 1977.
60. The Challenge of Slums, p. 30. 'Urban bias' theorists, like Michael Lipton who invented the term in 1977, argue that agriculture tends to be undercapitalized in developing countries, and cities relatively 'overurbanized', because fiscal and financial policies favour urban elites and distort investment flows. At the limit, cities are vampires of the countryside. See Lipton, Why Poor People Stay Poor: A Study of Urban Bias in World Development, Cambridge 1977.
61. Quoted in Tony Killick, 'Twenty-five Years in Development: the Rise and Impending Decline of Market Solutions', Development Policy Review, vol. 4, 1986, p. 101.
62. Deborah Bryceson, 'Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour Redundancy in the Neoliberal Era and Beyond', in Bryceson, Cristóbal Kay and Jos Mooij, eds, Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America, London 2000, p. 304-5.
63. Ha-Joon Chang, 'Kicking Away the Ladder: Infant Industry Promotion in Historical Perspective', Oxford Development Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2003, p. 21. 'Per capita income in developing countries grew at 3 per cent per annum between 1960 and 1980, but at only about 1.5 per cent between 1980 and 2000 . . . Neoliberal economists are therefore faced with a paradox here. The developing countries grew much faster when they used 'bad' policies during 1960-80 than when they used 'good' (or least 'better') policies during the following two decades.' (p. 28).
64. Slums, p. 48.
65. Carole Rakodi, 'Global Forces, Urban Change, and Urban Management in Africa', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, pp. 50, 60-1.
66. Piermay, 'Kinshasa', p. 235-6; 'Megacities', Time, 11 January 1993, p. 26.
67. Piermay, 'Kinshasa', p. 235-6; 'Megacities', Time, 11 January 1993, p. 26.
68. Michael Mattingly, 'The Role of the Government of Urban Areas in the Creation of Urban Poverty', in Sue Jones and Nici Nelson, eds, Urban Poverty in Africa, London 1999, p. 21.
69. Adil Ahmad and Ata El-Batthani, 'Poverty in Khartoum', Environment and Urbanization, vol. 7, no. 2, October 1995, p. 205.
70. Alain Dubresson, 'Abidjan', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, pp. 261-3.
71. World Bank, Nigeria: Country Brief, September 2003.
72. UN, World Urbanization Prospects, p. 12.
73. Luis Ainstein, 'Buenos Aires: a case of deepening social polarization', in Gilbert, Mega-City in Latin America, p. 139.
74. Gustavo Riofrio, 'Lima: Mega-city and mega-problem', in Gilbert, Mega-City in Latin America, p. 159; and Gilbert, Latin American City, p. 73.
75. Gustavo Riofrio, 'Lima: Mega-city and mega-problem', in Gilbert, Mega-City in Latin America, p. 159; and Gilbert, Latin American City, p. 73.
76. Hamilton Tolosa, 'Rio de Janeiro: Urban expansion and structural change', in Gilbert, Mega-City in Latin America, p. 211.
77. World Bank, Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, New York 2003.
78. Orlandina de Oliveira and Bryan Roberts, 'The Many Roles of the Informal Sector in Development', in Cathy Rakowski, ed., Contrapunto: the Informal Sector Debate in Latin America, Albany 1994, pp. 64-8.
79. Christian Rogerson, 'Globalization or informalization? African urban economies in the 1990s', in Rakodi, Urban Challenge, p. 348.
80. Slums, p. 2.
81. Albert Park et al., 'The Growth of Wage Inequality in Urban China, 1988 to 1999', World Bank working paper, February 2003, p. 27 (quote); and John Knight and Linda Song, 'Increasing urban wage inequality in China', Economics of Transition, vol. 11, no. 4, 2003, p. 616 (discrimination).
82. Albert Park et al., 'The Growth of Wage Inequality in Urban China, 1988 to 1999', World Bank working paper, February 2003, p. 27 (quote); and John Knight and Linda Song, 'Increasing urban wage inequality in China', Economics of Transition, vol. 11, no. 4, 2003, p. 616 (discrimination).
83. Slums, p. 34.
84. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, How Did the World's Poorest Fare in the 1990s?, World Bank paper, 2000.
85. See my Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, London 2001, especially pp. 206-9.
86. Slums, pp. 40, 46.
87. Keith Hart, 'Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana', Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 1973, pp. 61-89.
88. Alejandro Portes and Kelly Huffman, 'Latin American Class Structures: Their Composition and Change during the Neoliberal Era', Latin American Research Review, vol. 38, no. 1, 2003, p. 55.
89. Slums, p. 60.
90. Cited in the Economist, 21 March 1998, p. 37.
91. Dennis Rondinelli and John Kasarda, 'Job Creation Needs in Third World Cities', in Kasarda and Allan Parnell, eds, Third World Cities: Problems, policies and prospects, Newbury Park, CA 1993, pp. 106-7.
92. Slums, p. 103.
93. Guy Mhone, 'The impact of structural adjustment on the urban informal sector in Zimbabwe', Issues in Development discussion paper no. 2, International Labour Office, Geneva n.d., p. 19.
94. Slums, p. 104.
95. Orlandina de Oliveira and Bryan Roberts rightly emphasize that the bottom strata of the urban labour-force should be identified 'not simply by occupational titles or whether the job was formal or informal, but by the household strategy for obtaining an income'. The mass of the urban poor can only exist by 'income pooling, sharing housing, food and other resources' either with kin or landsmen. ('Urban Development and Social Inequality in Latin America', in Gugler, Cities in the Developing World, p. 290.)
96. Statistic on street kids: Natural History, July 1997, p. 4.
97. Dubresson, 'Abidjan', p. 263.
98. Rogerson, 'Globalization or informalization?', p. 347-51.
99. Bryceson, 'Disappearing Peasantries', pp. 307-8.
100. In Clifford Geertz's original, inimitable definition, 'involution' is 'an overdriving of an established form in such a way that it becomes rigid through an inward over-elaboration of detail'. (Agricultural involution: Social development and economic change in two Indonesian towns, Chicago 1963, p. 82.) More prosaically, 'involution', agricultural or urban, can be described as spiralling labour self-exploitation (other factors fixed) which continues, despite rapidly diminishing returns, as long as any return or increment is produced.
101. John Walton, 'Urban Conflict and Social Movements in Poor Countries: Theory and Evidence of Collective Action', paper to 'Cities in Transition Conference', Humboldt University, Berlin, July 1987.
102. Kurt Weyland, 'Neopopulism and Neoliberalism in Latin America: how much affinity?', Third World Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 6, 2003, pp. 1095-115.
103. For a fascinating if frightening account of Shiv Sena's ascendancy in Bombay at the expense of older Communist and trade-union politics, see Thomas Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay, Princeton 2001. See also Veena Das, ed., Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, New York 1990.
104. For a fascinating if frightening account of Shiv Sena's ascendancy in Bombay at the expense of older Communist and trade-union politics, see Thomas Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay, Princeton 2001. See also Veena Das, ed., Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, New York 1990.
105. Hugh McLeod, Piety and Poverty: Working-Class Religion in Berlin, London and New York, 1870-1914, New York 1996, pp. XXV, 6, 32.
106. Ignacio Ramonet, 'Le Maroc indécis', Le Monde diplomatique, July 2000, pp. 12-13. Another former leftist told Ramonet: 'Nearly 65 per cent of the population lives under the poverty line. The people of the bidonvilles are entirely cut off from the elites. They see the elites the way they used to see the French.'
107. In his controversial sociological interpretation of Pentecostalism, Robert Mapes Anderson claimed that 'its unconscious intent', like other millenarian movements, was actually 'revolutionary'. (Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism, Oxford 1979, p. 222.)
108. Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited, p. 77.
109. R. Andrew Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty, New Brunswick 1997, p. 29. On the historical associations of Pentecostalism with anarchism in Brazil, see Paul Freston, 'Pentecostalism in Latin America: Characteristics and Controversies', Social Compass, vol. 45, no. 3, 1998, p. 342.
110. R. Andrew Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty, New Brunswick 1997, p. 29. On the historical associations of Pentecostalism with anarchism in Brazil, see Paul Freston, 'Pentecostalism in Latin America: Characteristics and Controversies', Social Compass, vol. 45, no. 3, 1998, p. 342.
111. David Maxwell, 'Historicizing Christian Independency: The Southern Africa Pentecostal Movement, c. 1908-60', Journal of African History 40, 1990, p. 249; and Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance, Chicago 1985, p. 186.
112. David Maxwell, 'Historicizing Christian Independency: The Southern Africa Pentecostal Movement, c. 1908-60', Journal of African History 40, 1990, p. 249; and Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance, Chicago 1985, p. 186.
113. Chesnut, Born Again, p. 61. Indeed, Chesnut found that the Holy Ghost not only moved tongues but improved family budgets. 'By eliminating expenditures associated with the male prestige complex, Assembelianos were able to climb from the lower and middle ranks of poverty to the upper echelons, and some Quandrangulares migrated from poverty ... to the lower rungs of the middle class': p. 18.
114. 'In all of human history, no other non-political, non-militaristic, voluntary human movement has grown as rapidly as the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement in the last twenty years': Peter Wagner, foreward to Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, Grand Rapids 1997, p. xi.
115. The high estimate is from David Barret and Todd Johnson, 'Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2001,' International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 25, no. 1, January 2001, p. 25. Synan says there were 217 million denominated Pentecostals in 1997 (Holiness, p. ix). On Latin America, compare Freston, 'Pentecostalism', p. 337; Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited; and David Martin, 'Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America', in Karla Poewe, ed., Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, Columbia 1994, pp. 74-5.
116. The high estimate is from David Barret and Todd Johnson, 'Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2001,' International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 25, no. 1, January 2001, p. 25. Synan says there were 217 million denominated Pentecostals in 1997 (Holiness, p. ix). On Latin America, compare Freston, 'Pentecostalism', p. 337; Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited; and David Martin, 'Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America', in Karla Poewe, ed., Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, Columbia 1994, pp. 74-5.
117. The high estimate is from David Barret and Todd Johnson, 'Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2001,' International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 25, no. 1, January 2001, p. 25. Synan says there were 217 million denominated Pentecostals in 1997 (Holiness, p. ix). On Latin America, compare Freston, 'Pentecostalism', p. 337; Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited; and David Martin, 'Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America', in Karla Poewe, ed., Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, Columbia 1994, pp. 74-5.
118. The high estimate is from David Barret and Todd Johnson, 'Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2001,' International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 25, no. 1, January 2001, p. 25. Synan says there were 217 million denominated Pentecostals in 1997 (Holiness, p. ix). On Latin America, compare Freston, 'Pentecostalism', p. 337; Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited; and David Martin, 'Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America', in Karla Poewe, ed., Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, Columbia 1994, pp. 74-5.
119. See Paul Gifford's brilliant Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia, Cambridge 1993. Also Peter Walshe, Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg 1995, especially pp. 110-1.
120. See Paul Gifford's brilliant Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia, Cambridge 1993. Also Peter Walshe, Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg 1995, especially pp. 110-1.
121. Jefrey Gamarra, 'Conflict, Post-Conflict and Religion: Andean Responses to New Religious Movements', Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2000, p. 272. Andres Tapia quotes the Peruvian theologian Samuel Escobar who sees Sendero Luminoso and the Pentecostals as 'flip sides of the same coin' - 'both were seeking a powerful break with injustices, only the means were different.' 'With Shining Path's decline, Pentecostalism has emerged as the winner for the souls of poor Peruvians.' ('In the Ashes of the Shining Path', Pacific News Service, 14 Feburary 1996).
122. Jefrey Gamarra, 'Conflict, Post-Conflict and Religion: Andean Responses to New Religious Movements', Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2000, p. 272. Andres Tapia quotes the Peruvian theologian Samuel Escobar who sees Sendero Luminoso and the Pentecostals as 'flip sides of the same coin' - 'both were seeking a powerful break with injustices, only the means were different.' 'With Shining Path's decline, Pentecostalism has emerged as the winner for the souls of poor Peruvians.' ('In the Ashes of the Shining Path', Pacific News Service, 14 Feburary 1996).
123. Freston, 'Pentecostalism', p. 352.
124. Comaroff, Body of Power, pp. 259-63.