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, and even from 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 unforeseen development, and asks whether the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, are volcanoes waiting to erupt. |
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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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