World cities

Planet of Slums

As the sprawling sky rocketed buildings , and electrifying industries began to show the dreams of unlimited potentials , our eyes are yet to catch nasty travails of the urban life in all its vicissitude . 2005 was a witness to the ever increase in population in cities- expecting to reach 10 billion mark in 2050 , but majority of them confined in the areas characterized by crumbling houses , dirty water , unhygienic environment , and very minimum sources and nothing in the name of social services , and ever increasing unemployment rate . These are slum

areas of the urban cities where maximum of migrants from villages and small towns find their place

Planet of Slums ' by Mike Davis is an exploration of these dark corners of the most virtualized urban cities and , also reflects his deep commitment for raising our consciousness towards the real causes behind the unprecedented growth of these slum areas . He analyzed the grim view of this global phenomenon over the past half-century and what this billion strong slum population had in store for political future

From as far as places like Brazil to New Guinea , and from Senegal to Pakistan , rural folks are leaving their traditional occupation and landing in the slums of the urban cites for new growth and income opportunities in new occupational arenas . In countries like Africa and Latin America , people flocked to cities to escape from either the war or famine or got attracted by the income growth in factories producing clothes like t-shirts , sneakers , and toothbrushes never heard of before Though the impact of migration process is being felt since the first industrial revolution , yet the conditions and the environment they have been staying in truly reflect their shattered dreams . They dream of getting rich but what they are gaining in cities like Manchester Chicago , Tokyo and Mumbai are their unending lives in dirty towns and squatter camps

Guldin 's case study of Southern China exposes the point that it is not only the cities which are being developed but it is also the vice versa Villagers become more like market and xiang towns , and county towns and small cities become more like large cities (Davis 2006 : 9 ) Many countries are also witness to the bubbling city lives reaching at the doorstep of the rural folks in their own villages or towns . It has quite happened in Malaysia where journalist SeaBrook highlighted the fate of several fishermen , Engulfed by urbanization without migrating , their lives overturned , even while remaining on the spot where they were born (Davis 2006 : 9 ) The lives of fishermen had all been uprooted by the new waves of urbanization , which cut off their homes from sea due to new highway , polluted their fishing ponds due to urban waste , and deforested the neighboring hillsides to construct apartment blocks

Johannesburg is one of the many cities , which is a witness to the degeneration of soil owing to continuous inebriated mining . More than half of the non-white population is surviving at informal settlements in...