comparative case study

An Exchange between the Poor and the Rich

The relationship between the poor and the rich in our world is shrinking especially in our cities . Whereby , we find various groups of people who are classified as follows the capitalists these are those people who need cheap labor and infrastructure , the poor migrants who need jobs and a minimal secure housing and the public officials who need to juggle larger resource agendas and still get re-elected , these three types of people may not understand each other very well , but their interdependence is the

most fundamental factor in their development in modern cities

Though it is hard to define a living process with so much experimentation and so many flavors , I was able to come up with two definitions of the exchange between the poor and the rich , from two interviewees , Jean a Casual Worker , who is sixty years of age and is a slum dweller in one of the cities in the country , and Paul a Development Activist who is forty five years of age living in a suburban area of the same city

Jean comes up with an idea claiming that , the gap dividing the poor and the rich is getting wider , as the process of development brings prosperity for some but further marginalizes the poor , she says that the cases on urban insecurity , violence and environmental deterioration are going up and up , while the breakdown of neighborhoods , communities and families is eroding the social fabric which makes our cities decent places to live . She says that everybody in her area agrees that we having a major mess in our living

Jean says that there are the rich and the poor at every scale , within their communities , cities , countries and regions and that in every context , it is generally the rich who take the prerogative to solve problems and in this case of cities whereby , solutions put forward by the rich have not worked at all , but have made much harsher the poor peoples burden . While issues on infrastructure , real estate and investments get discussed in the cities , the problem of us the urban poor get neglected , causing the inter-depended equations to get ever more lopsided and we are back to where we started from in our normal problems ' she adds

Jean was therefore questioned why was their problems keep happening in there area of settlement , she said that the non-involvement of the poor in these kinds of solutions is critical . Meaning that , there are no solutions that work for the poor and that if there were , communities would already be using them . Most externally propagated alternatives are not providing the kind of solutions that were anticipated . She says development interventions which sought to deal with a single issue , no matter how well designed , they have not bean able to deal with the reality that human beings have needs that are multi-faceted and interconnected needs , which can be resolved in discrete bits . She says although very few resources get allocated...