“For the first time the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural.”
Davis starts out with this little f act. He tells us that this transition may have already occurred in the third world. In fact, the world population has exploded way faster than anyone could have ever predicted. There are now 400 cities that have over one million people inhabiting them. By 2015 it is predicted that there will be 150 more cities that have such a big population. The cities will continue to keep growing but it seems as if the rural areas have reached their peak and will begin to dwindle down.
More...
In the urban climacteric he goes on with some more numbers concerning the population. Davis tells us that there will be megacities that reach the eight million mark and there may even be hyper cities that reach more than twenty million inhabitants. To me it’s beginning to sound a bit repetitive, at least until he moves on to one of the problems of this population boom.
“But if megacities are the brightest stars in the urban firmament, three-quarters of the burden of population growth will be borne by faintly visible second-tier cities and smaller urban areas: places where, as UN researchers emphasize, ‘there is little or no planning to accommodate these people or provide them with services.’”
If the thought hadn’t occurred to you already the problem becomes clear after reading this section. A lot of these cities simply aren’t equipped to handle all of these people. They don’t have the space or the resources. The reason this is happening is because people are moving into smaller cities and causing them to grow. The big city problems are now being extended out to the smaller cities in the world. It’s as if millions of people are moving into small town America, those small towns simply can’t handle all of the new people. This population boom in the small cities is pretty much destroying the whole idea of a small town. Small towns never used to have the big city problems and with this growth they are gaining problems they have never faced before.
“ The mountain of trash seemed to stretch very far, then gradually without perceptible demarcation or boundary it became something else. But what? A jumbled and pathless collection of structures. Cardboard cartons, plywood and rotting boards, the rusting and glassless shells of cars, had been thrown together to form habitation.”
Here comes the heart of the problem. Davis describes the slums so well that you really can’t ignore the sad feeling that comes over you. It is estimated that there were 921 million people living in slums in 2001. That is an astonishing number. The people who live in these slums are said to earn less money than the cost of their minimum required daily nutrition. The sad thing is that countries like to ignore this problem by lying about it. An example of this is Bangkok; their poverty rate is only 5% but after a survey is was shown that a quarter of their population was living below the poverty line! The countries are massively undercounting the slum populations.
“The urban poor, meanwhile, are everywhere forced to settle on hazardous and otherwise unbuildable terrains—over-steep hill slopes, river banks and floodplains. Likewise they squat in the deadly shadows of refineries, chemical factories, toxic dumps, or in the margins of railroads and highways.”
The poor are forced to live in these terrible conditions on the edge of cities because they have no other choice. Poverty has created a whole new urban disaster. The people living in these areas are at constant risk for floods, mudslides, and plant explosions along with the dangers of the toxic fumes surrounding them. The sad thing is this doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon. It is estimated that two billion people will be living in slums by 2030. It is estimated that 40 to 50 percent of the total population of cities by 2020 will be living in poverty.
The best part is that the Reagan and Bush administrations helped this along with the IMF. The IMF is supposed to be helping people but instead they are hurting, they simply don’t have the knowledge needed to help these people.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
To me it seems that at the stem of Mike Davis's argument is the IMF and World Bank. Which are hugely backed and supported by the United States because it appears that these global economic organizations are not their to benefit the nations they are loaning money to but the interests of the capitalist markets and corporations of the western world. Although I do not fully understand global economics, these groups loan money to "third world" nations and then using this loan as leverage to restructure the economies of these nations, more often than not at the expense of essential social programs that seemed to be making some progress.
ReplyDelete"...three-quarters of the burden of population growth will be borne by faintly visible second-tier cities and smaller urban areas: places where, as UN researchers emphasize, ‘there is little or no planning to accommodate these people or provide them with services.’" (p 1-2)
ReplyDeleteThis seems crazy to me. A time and place of disaster is known, but nothing is being done to try and soften the blow? The trends are evident but no precaution is being taken? That makes no sense.
"The disenfranchised communities of the urban poor, in addition, are vulnerable to sudden outbursts of state violence like the infamous 1990 bulldozing of the Maroko beach slum in Lagos (‘an eyesore for the neighbouring community of Victoria Island, a fortress for the rich’) or the 1995 demolition in freezing weather of the huge squatter town of Zhejiangcun on the edge of Beijing" (p 7).
I'm not familiar with these "infamous" events and I found them interesting. I wonder how much of a warning the residents were given (if any) and what became of them once their homes were destroyed. It amazes me that people could be so inhumane, to just sweep the place clean because it's an "eye sore" to those who live near it rather than offer help to those who actually had to live in it.
Davis discusses the increase in urbanization. He discusses the problem of Urban Poverty with many statistics and powerful quotes. for example "The mountain of trash seemed to stretch very far, then gradually without perceptible demarcation or boundary it became something else. But what? A jumbled and pathless collection of structures. Cardboard cartons, plywood and rotting boards, the rusting and glassless shells of cars, had been thrown together to form habitation."
ReplyDeleteHe reviews "The Challenge of the Slums" the first global audit of urban poverty. although "The Challenge of the Slums" overlooks many important issues like sprawl, environmental degradation, and urban hazards it is important to research on how to mitigate urban poverty, just as important to climate change as the IPCC reports are.
The problem of poverty cannot be helped if the populations continue to be deliberately miscounted, a small miscount would be understandable but there is a big difference between 5 and 25%. according to King more than 85% of the urban population of the developing countries occupy property illegally. Towns such as Lagos have unknown populations, no proper sanitation, and many deaths from HIV and other infections.
I also agree with Amanda, I cant believe people would destroy slums just because they are an eyesore, if they are so rich why don't they try and help the people instead of destroying the only home they have although it is not a good one.
I agree with Alicia, from the reading it seems like even though the IMF is supposed to be helping people, they are making things worse, or just not helping. for example the restructuring of third world economies in the 1980's, from what I understand it was supposed to slow third world urbanization but it continued to grow at 3.8% per year. another example is the SAP or Structural Adjustment Programme. the logic of this program was that to restore the economy everything had to be taken from the underprivileged citizens. this increased the wealth gap.