"Planet of Slums" by Mike Davis

Abstract

From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to Mumbai's chawls, to the garbage slum of Manila's Smoky Mountain and across to the slums of Los Angeles, Mike Davis' Planet of Slums is a whirlwind tour of the unseen Third World. As is the case with most people after such a continent-hopping trip, one is left overstimulated, weary, and reeling from what one has seen. Davis' latest book is an intriguing albeit relentless look at the global phenomenon of slums, the history of its creation and subsequent perpetuation, as well as the people who have grappled with the politics of slum life for generations. Flying in the face of Western visions of an urban future wrought of steel and glass, Davis makes it undeniably clear that, "[i]nstead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first-century urban world sits in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement and decay." (Davis 2006). The ominous title sets the tone for this book, and Davis manages to illuminate the shadowy political and social processes that shape slum life without losing readers in angry diatribes, over-specialized analysis or the activation of guilt, tactics that have come to be characteristics of the genre.