(2006-05-30) Davis Planet Of Slums

Mike Davis wrote a PlanetOfSlums (Slum) essay (Urbanization) which since became a book ISBN:1844670228 .

Geoff Manaugh has a two-part interview with Davis posted.

• Davis notes that he hasn't spent any time in these cities, he's working from other published works.

• Core Vs Gap (William Gibson's Virtual Light), FourGW

• local Emergent Democracy vs Feudalism/Globalization

• Pentecostalism

• Urban Development: Another conclusion is that almost all the research on informal urban economies has shown that informality is simply not generating job ladders. Sure, some micro-entrepreneurs go on to become mini-entrepreneurs - but the larger fact is you're just subdividing Poverty. You're getting more and more people competing, trying to pursue the same survival strategies in the same place. Those are the facts that darken this book the most, I think. They're also what darken the horizon of research on the city in general, even more than questions of sanitation and so on. What the World Bank, what the NGO-s, what all the apostles of neoliberal self-help depend on is the availability of cheap, squattable land, and the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities in the informal sector.

Tom Engelhardt has one too.