Via a beautiful visual essay on the latest ADBUSTERS, I learned about the book Planet of Slums
Sometime in the next year or two, a woman will give birth in the Lagos slum of Ajegunle, a young man will flee his village in west Java for the bright lights of Jakarta, or a farmer will move his impoverished family into one of Lima’s inumerable pueblos jovenes. The exact moment is unimportant and it will pass unnoticed. Nonetheless it will constitute a watershed in human history; comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions. For the first time the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural. Indeed, given the imprecisions of Third World censuses, this epochal transition may already have occurred
Indeed. How can it be possible to know anything about what is happening in places like these? Above a section of what is known as “Ciudad Neza” in Mexico City. Click to open the Google Map and zoom in to appreciate the detail. This is undeveloped land beyond the city limits. The more organized grid to the left is where the city “ends”. The paradox is that they are full of vitality, with people constantly fighting to survive. Really.
If you walk into a favella, banlieu, callampas, bidonville, vijiji, gecekonduler or kampung, you will be blown away by how much vitality and human connectness thrives there. Friendships are close, deals fast, love within the family intense - people live!
And for a very selected minority with superb skills, wisdom or plain street-smarts there will be a way out that will take them to their next destination in their neverending race to the top, or the center of the city. No one moves into these slums thinking “this is it!”. They are always temporary solutions. The image above from a slum bordering Caracas, Venezuela, built to the side of a highway and up into the mountains.
There’s a global boom in gated communities, self-contained shopping enclaves, fortified corporate towers and secure holiday resorts. The rich nations scramble to erect walls on their borders and pass ever-tighter anti-immigration laws to keep undesirables out.
As ADBUSTERS suggest, the new urban paradigm may very well be based on the high-density of these slums. Places where humanity takes precedence over the material world, where luxury has nothing to do with the riches of the world, but with the knowledge on how to live a good life.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Abaddon // Apr 23, 2007 at 2:11 pm
“Places where humanity takes precedence over the material
world, where luxury has nothing to do with the riches of the
world, but with the knowledge on how to live a good life.”
It is true that more and more people are being forced out of their homes and into the slums that are the only place people can live in. Yet it is unfortunate that there is a vast amount of individuals who blame their misfortune on the peoples “characters.” Mainly people in rich countries, who tend to live in bubbles of harmony believe that people in poor nations, like Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, etc., live in a poor state because the lack of proper governments–like the one the United States has in place. However, people must be made to understand what the true reason is for the poor’s misfortune. Globalization, “Free Trade”, to mention a couple, are the reason why the governments of developing nations forget the poor, it is the rich few who are able to speak to government and gain whatever it maybe that they want. People soon forget that the shoes they wear may have been made by a woman, or child, working 16 hours a day for a pay of $3.00 under harsh conditions. People may soon forget that the clothes they wear may come from a developing nation where the factory owners are in bed with government officials who are only looking for one thing–profit. People may soon forget that children are only able to attend school for a period of four years, before they are forced into labor. People may soon forget everything mentioned above, but what people tend not to forget is that the very livelihood of people in “rich” nations depends on the misery of another individual.
2 Manuel // Apr 25, 2007 at 11:47 am
Economy and trade are not win-lose games. Asserting that the wealth of a few is based on the misery of a lot could be true during the colonial times when slavery and explotaition were more generalized. I need to agree that the low wages and poor working conditions in developing countries result in low prices of t-shirts and tomatoes, but I also thing that trade is a win-win situation. In Mexico, is harder and harder to hire domestic service, which was the traditional employment for the poor women, because now they prefer to work for maquilas. So now the remaining domestic labour is better paid (because it becomes scarce) and poor women can choose to work in maquilas because, even given the low payment, it is still better than the alternative (domestic, sell empanadas in the street, no job). We still have a long way to go and there is a lot of work to reduce the weath gap, (besides modern slavery, child labour, sweatshops), but we need to use the right tools and not false propaganda.
3 Abaddon // Apr 25, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Thank you Manuel for your comments, however I must disagree with you on the issue of “false propaganda.” I have mentioned that the wealthy people are in bed with the governments of developing nations, which is a true statement. I have mentioned that people are being forced into labor not because they want to, but because the people have to. It is true that individuals would rather choose to work in maquilas because it is a stable job. When given a choice of working on the streets or at home (where jobs are not stable) to working in a maquila, people would choose the latter. It is not a false propaganda that I am sharing with anyone reading this article, it is a glimpse at the truth that people must face.
4 Juan // Apr 25, 2007 at 5:32 pm
In response to Manuels comment of “using the right tools and not false propaganda,” what are the right tools and what is false propaganda? Currently we have nations in Latin America who are suffering because of their governments ineptness and greed; the tools, regulations, trade agreements, what ever you want to call it have not worked and if they continue on the same path they never will. Free trade is not something that benefits those suffering populations, it benefits nations like the United States and Canada. These two countries do not have not worry about taxation on imports or exports instead they pass on those worries to the population of those poor countries.
Globalization does not offer better wages or better working conditions, the reason why globalization is so lucrative to big corporations is because they can find cheap labor by outsourcing their industry, ensuring that they leave thousands jobless and continuing that colonial period. Women who work in maquilas do have a more stable income, but at what cost? What conditions do they work under? United Fruit Company in Guatemala has provided many jobs to those in that region, but the working conditions were not the best. The company, who had manny connections to the United States Government, decided to continue its influence in the region when the freely elected government of Guatemala was toppled by CIA forces in 1954 because Arbenz wanted to implement a modest land reform. This so called “myth” as you call it, that governments are not involved in business is ridiculous, it is the truth.
5 juan // Apr 25, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Abaddon, Manuel, Juan: great comments. A couple of notes: the spirit of this post is that even with the very difficult conditions that people from slums must face every day, there is life thriving at its fullest. Abaddon, character is not to blame for their poor conditions, but deserves all the merit when they are able to pull ahead against all odds and make it to the next level, be that better living quarters or a steady job.
It is too easy to fall on common stereotypes about the situations happening in places we don’t know. To talk about maquilas without knowing the people that work there or about Canada and Free Trade without full knowledge of the real conditions will lead to a poor debate. I rather hear first hand stories from the places and people you know best. I am assuming Juan knows something about Guatemala and United Fruit? Exploring our Global Culture depends mostly on gaining insight from global citizens that have deep local knowledge and great global awareness.
6 Manuel // Apr 26, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Just to clarify: False propaganda is assuming that all rich are rich because they exploit the poor. It is also assuming that poor people live in hash condition DUE to globalization and that they will be better off if free trade never existed.
The right tools will be indicators of how poor people live now, comparing to past years. Not all maquilas are bad places to work, If we say that “Women who work in maquilas do have a more stable income, but at what cost? What conditions do they work under?” we need then to find first the real answers for these very valid questions and analyse sector by sector, not only a company, and then analyse how the same people lived before. I know the people who worked in domestic service and then move to maquilas because they worked at my house in Monterrey, Tampico and Merida (all in Mexico). The salary we paid was more than average and the work very steady; we also provide social insurance payments, but of course maquilas’ salary is higher. The conditions are not bad (they work in the IKEA maquila in Merida and in Sara Lee in Monterrey, we kept in touch with them) and we are happy they found a better job environment.
I agree that this is not a ‘we did it!’ situation but blaming all on Free Trade and transnationals is what I call a false propaganda. No offense intended because I still know that there are a lot of things to do (promote fair trade, increase education, close sweatshops, ban child labour), but at the same time we cannot just deny all the advances and blame the rich in general. Indicators like income per capita, wealth distribution, and life expectancy are going slowly but steadly up at least in Mexico, and we can check that in all the sources. Thanks to Juan for providing an excellent forum to analyse these topics.
7 Global Culture » the economist on cities (part 1) // May 7, 2007 at 3:52 pm
[...] The world goes to town is The Economist report on the important milestone that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in slums of hope: our urban obsession would’ve finally conquered the majority of the world population. A must-read, the special report touches on all the important themes related to the evolution of cities in the age of globalization and migration. Since some of the themes have been recurring in this space, I created a brief summary of the special report with links to my own posts on cities: [...]
8 Global Culture » the economist on cities (part 2) // May 13, 2007 at 10:47 pm
[...] Et in suburbia ego?: presents the debate between suburbia and downtown with equal amount of critics claiming each one will prevail. If anything the debate on Global Warming has tipped the scales in favour of city cores, but perhaps the more important argument yet to be recognized in the evolution of global cities is the fact that their growth will be powered by a legion of immigrants with limited resources (see the south in the hearth of the north) and while they would gladly buy a small apartment downtown or settle in a nice community in the suburbs the fact is that most of them get trapped in the slums of hope. These often neglected areas contribute to the growth of cities in a very important way and yet are out of control. There is no stopping the ongoing migration that makes them grow, but only smart cities will find a way to integrate these people in the economic life and build flourishing corridors abundant with life and hope. [...]
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