1901. Planet of Slums
- Author:
- Ron Kassimir
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Planet of Slums is relentless. Mike Davis, the prolific author and social critic, piles on evidence in the service of a passionate, despairing, and at times furious analysis of the economic, social, and environmental state of cities in the global South. Davis might have just as readily titled his book The World Is a Ghetto, after the 1972 hit by the band War. But a key goal of the book is to show how much things have changed since that time, almost all for the worse. If the book tends to oversimplify enormously complex and diverse urban worlds, it has an undeniable virtue at its core. Whereas the War tune's chorus was ''don't you know / that it's true / that for me and for you / the world is a ghetto,'' Davis never stops asking who the ''me and you'' are. The growth and transformation of slums from Cairo to Manila, from Lagos to Lima, are both a symbol and a cause of a growing gap in life chances (socioeconomic and existential) between rich and poor—local, national, and global in scale.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, and War