Planet Of The Slums Mike Davis Summary

In today’s society, gentrification is considered a taboo not to be spoken of unless being attacked; however, Justin Davidson, a professional critic, challenges this notion and examines both sides of this custom. As an author, architecture and classical music critic, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Davidson approaches the issue of gentrification with a unique style of neutrality that leads his audience to question all they thought they knew about gentrifying.

In the first part of the article Major Brown discuss development in the world were people constantly are moving into cities. Major Brown explains that the growth of cities and megacities in general will happen in their slums, and that future conflicts will take place were

The book The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts gives an honest account of a village in Manchester in the first 25 years of the 20th century. The title is a reference to a description used by Friedrich Engels to describe the area in his book Conditions of the Working Class. The University of Manchester Press first published Roberts' book in the year 1971. The more recent publication by Penguin Books contains 254 pages, including the appendices. The author gives a firsthand description of the extreme poverty that gripped the area in which he grew up. His unique perspective allows him to accurately describe the self-imposed caste system, the causes and effects of widespread poverty, and the

Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums, predicts the direction in which the world’s cities are headed, and how the changes in living conditions are only going to deteriorate if certain trends continue. The title of his book explains Davis’s vision for the future of cities as he feels there is enough evidence pointing towards an exponential rise in slum populations across the world’s largest cities. Additionally, he expresses his opinion on many issues regarding the rapid rise in developing cities’ slum populations, although he offers very one-sided arguments geared towards those who feel the current system is causing more problems rather than improving current conditions. This causes Davis to overlook the problems of slums as resolvable through different modes of assistance such as international aid programs. Instead, he views aid programs as the root cause of imbalance created during industrialization. Throughout the book, Davis presents information that confirms his preconceptions towards the slums. Therefore, all the evidence that is presented by him portrays confirmation bias as Davis fails to mention anything about the resolution of the problem of the growing number of slums and instead sees this problem as unavoidable. Particularly, Davis’ writing, although intended for the general population, is more geared towards critics who have similar ideas. Instead of providing the means through which the economy could be improved and the problem of slums could be resolved, it is

New York City, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit were one of the first cities that accepted a huge invasion of African-Americans from the South. These African-American migrants were optimistic of a better life in these cities. Later, the mass exodus of African-Americans from the South was an economic explosion in nature. In the following sections, we examine how the Great Migration in the 1900s changed the nature of cities and urban centers.

During the past few years, gentrification has been on an uprise.“Nearly 20 percent of neighborhoods with lower incomes and home values have experienced gentrification since 2000, compared to only 9 percent during the 1990s.” Gentrification is happening in areas that supposedly need a change, such as the low-income neighborhoods in New York City, Minneapolis, Seattle and Washington, D.C.Factors such as uniqueness, accessibility, the energy of the neighborhood and reasonably priced homes attract gentrifiers. It has altered many cities in the country. Gentrification can be defined as the procedure of reestablishment and remaking due to the flood of prosperous individuals into falling apart and low-income areas that frequently displaces poorer

Promises not Kept: Poverty and the Betrayal of Third World Development by John Isbister is a balanced, penetrating, and exciting account of why most people on the planet are poor, who has betrayed the promise for social change, and what we can do about it. Isbister gives a superb overview of third world development. He challenges people in developed nations to accept their share of responsibility for Third World stagnation and examines and analyzing international development issues. Promises not Kept offers provocative answers to the question of increasing world poverty.

Viewing the complex matter of gentrification succinctly, it helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly, the poor, and the black who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the communities and livelihood maintained by these set of people because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area.

According to Dictionary.com, “gentrification is the process of renovating houses and stores in urban neighborhoods to fit the middle or upper-income families, raising property value, but often displacing low-income families.” Gentrification has been an idea since the 1960s and had an effect on countless cities and neighborhood communities. Gentrification was first used by Ruth Glass in her book London: Aspect of Change in 1964, she noted that ¨gentrification can progress rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed.” Nonetheless, gentrification has helped revive many cities and revolutionize them, especially with technological

Unfortunately, it was estimated that roughly 1.2 billion people in 1993 lived in extreme or absolute poverty, that which Robert McNamara regards “‘a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable standard of human dignity’” (Singer 219, 220). These estimates can be projected at nearly 2 billion today. A large majority of the people living in absolute poverty resides in underdeveloped countries. Among the nearly 4.4 billion people in these countries, “3/5 lives in societies lacking basic sanitation; 1/3 go without safe drinking water; 1/4 lack adequate housing; 1/5 are undernourished, and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day” (Speth 1).

The movie “City of God” portrays this social problem perfectly well. Most people in the slums live there because they cannot survive in urban areas due to the high cost of living. The slum is also known for people who are unemployed therefore prefer living in this area to avoid where they can be able to afford at least housing if not food. It is highly unlikely to hear people living in slums and is well-off financially as the standards here cannot allow a financially stable person to live in this place. The slum is normally filthy and most people prefer living in areas that are not socially

Since the early 2000s, gentrification accelerated in various New York City neighborhoods. Data shown that about 29.8 percent of New York City has been affected by gentrification in low-income communities (Governing Data 1). This is over a 20 percent increased from the previous decade in New York City alone. Gentrification is a term used to describe displacement or renewal in urban neighborhoods as a result of increasing property values and rent prices. Gentrification has existed since the 1960s but has rapidly increased since then . Gentrification has now become a common and global controversial topic in many low-income neighborhood. Although, gentrification hasn’t always been bad from increasing job opportunities to lowering crime rates. Gentrification has impacted and transformed underprivileged districts in New York City. However, at the advantage of who ? Thus, gentrification has only increased average rates of poverty and infused neighborhoods with “white privilege”.

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) define the characteristics of slum housing as nondurable drinking water, insufficient domestic space, lack of drinking water, lack of sanitation, and tenure security. Based on this definition provided by the MDG, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Cuba can be classified as countries that are on track with the reduction of slum housing, for example. On the other hand, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Paraguay are stabilizing. All other Latin American countries and Caribbean countries are at risk or off track (Smith 76). Although Brazil’s condition is stabilizing, there is still a heavy amount of improvement necessary before we can deny the significance of the issue. Sao Paulo is still plagued by the slum houses and the favelas and awareness needs to be constantly shed on this issue. There is still a lot of work to be done and solely because the conditions may seem to be “stabilizing,” it is still not safe to assume that Brazil will be alright. The housing conditions of Brazil need to be more than alright, they have to be more than satisfactory; the conditions need to reach high levels of success so that the cities and the citizens living within will

A “surplus humanity” is urbanization without industrialization and are informal urbanites in the slum. Globalized capitalism forces, such as Structural Adjustment Programs, were imposed by International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Washington Consensus on the developing countries from 1970. These programs are the major cause of the “surplus humanity”. In Mike Davis’s “Planet of the Slums”, he says there is a distinction between urbanization that had root in industrialization in the 19th and 20th century and the urbanization that was mainly caused by Structural Adjustment Programs in the last view decades of the 20th century (Davis 2006). Davis discusses Karl Marx and Webber’s social theory that “believed that the great cities of

At present, in excess of half of the world’s population is situated in urban environments (United Nations 2004, Fuller 2007). Staggeringly, by 2030, the urban population is projected to reach 4.9 billion, while the rural population is expected to decrease in size by 28 million (UNFPA 2007). It is argued that the sustained growth in urban areas has been propelled by the increase in size and prevalence of urban squatter settlements. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2003a) reports that 78% of the urban population in the lowest income countries resides in squatter settlements (2003a). Simmel (1903) and Wirth (1938) emphasised the oppressive nature of cities, derived from densely populated, diverse and swelling metropolitan cities. In turn, this creates psychological suffering, helping to explain why the incidence of psychiatric illnesses are higher in urban areas (Lehrer 2009). While this is still true of many urban areas, predominantly in the global north; what these theorists fail to recognise is the diverse nature of cities south of the Brandt line, and how the standard of living and psychological health of its inhabitants is detrimentally impacted. This essay will explore, early theorist’s analyses of health in cities, followed by how their perspectives are still relevant in the 21st century mostly in developed countries. Subsequently, the essay will critique the stance of early urban theorists, suggesting how their analyses may no longer be relevant in the