Look around: the largest migration in human history is under way. For the first time ever, more people are living in cities than in rural areas. Between 2007 and 2050, the world’s cities will have absorbed 3.1 billion people. Urbanization is the mass movement that will change our world during the twenty-first century, and the “arrival city” is where it is taking place.
The arrival city exists on the outskirts of the metropolis, in the slums, or in the suburbs; the American version is New York’s Lower East Side of a century ago or today’s Herndon County, Virginia. These are the places where newcomers try to establish new lives and to integrate themselves socially and economically. Their goal is to build communities, to save and invest, and, hopefully, move out, making room for the next wave of migrants. For some, success is years away; for others, it will never come at all.
As vibrant places of exchange, arrival cities have long been indicators of social health. Whether it’s Paris in 1789 or Tehran in 1978, whenever migrant populations are systematically ignored, we should expect violence and extremism. But, as the award-winning journalist Doug Saunders demonstrates, when we make proper investments in our arrival cities—through transportation, education, security, and citizenship—a prosperous middle class develops.
Saunders takes us on a tour of these vital centers, from Maryland to Shenzhen, from the favelas of Rio to the shantytowns of Mumbai, from Los Angeles to Nairobi. He uncovers the stories—both inspiring and heartbreaking—of the people who live there, and he shows us how the life or death of our arrival cities will determine the shape of our future.
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From Publishers Weekly
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Review
“A brisk world tour of enormous urban-fringe neighborhoods populated by people who have left the countryside, among them Tartary, in west-central Poland; Kibera, in Nairobi; and Petare, in Caracas . . . Perhaps because Saunders is a journalist who isn’t selling his advice, his version of the city is . . . more persuasive.”
—Nicholas Leman, The New Yorker
“Saunders’s success stories tend to begin with benign neglect—as the arrival city takes its emergent form, dense and improvised—and to end with carefully tailored state interventions. These efforts typically go well beyond legal measures like title granting, he notes, to include ‘a wide and expensive range of government-funded services and supports.’ One does not need to be a cynic, alas, to suspect that cities and nations may not apply their best policies to their worst neighborhoods. But for those who are wise enough to try, Saunders has written the manual.”
—Jonathan Shainin, Bookforum
“[An] excellent account of how urban immigrant centers function in increasingly subtle ways, and how governments succeed and fail in managing them. . . . Arrival City asks that we take a closer look at urbanization before its mismanagement is further mistaken for the thing itself, and to recognize that a citified future is not necessarily a doomed one.”
—Jessica Loudis, NPR.org
“Serious, mightily researched, lofty and humane, Arrival City is packed with salient detail and could hardly be more timely. . . . Saunders’s optimistic book, which draws on the work of economists, sociologists and urban planners, feels as important in its way as was Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities . . . It feels like a game changer; it should certainly be a policy changer.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Life in the arrival city can be fragile, precarious and lonely. It can also be liberating, empowering and the path to economic success and personal fulfillment. Arrival City presents an optimistic and humane view of global urbanization. Let’s hope urban planners and politicians pay attention.”
—Melanie Kirkpatrick, Wall Street Journal
“A brisk world tour of enormous urban-fringe neighborhoods populated by people who have left the countryside, among them Tartary, in west-central Poland; Kibera, in Nairobi; and Petare, in Caracas . . . Perhaps because Saunders is a journalist who isn’t selling his advice, his version of the city is . . . more persuasive.”
—Nicholas Leman, The New Yorker
“Saunders’s success stories tend to begin with benign neglect—as the arrival city takes its emergent form, dense and improvised—and to end with carefully tailored state interventions. These efforts typically go well beyond legal measures like title granting, he notes, to include ‘a wide and expensive range of government-funded services and supports.’ One does not need to be a cynic, alas, to suspect that cities and nations may not apply their best policies to their worst neighborhoods. But for those who are wise enough to try, Saunders has written the manual.”
—Jonathan Shainin, Bookforum
“[An] excellent account of how urban immigrant centers function in increasingly subtle ways, and how governments succeed and fail in managing them. . . . Arrival City asks that we take a closer look at urbanization before its mismanagement is further mistaken for the thing itself, and to recognize that a citified future is not necessarily a doomed one.”
—Jessica Loudis, NPR.org
“With the voice of a seasoned reporter, Saunders writes compelling, first-hand narratives describing the challenges and triumphs of migrant families from across the globe . . . The major contribution of Arrival City is a call to take seriously the needs of immigrant communities in urban areas.”
—Chesa Boudin, San Francisco Chronicle
“Incisive study of worldwide rural-to-urban migration, its complex social mechanisms and the consequences of institutional neglect . . . Never speculative, Saunders dexterously weaves personal case studies—some of which are practically unspeakable and ultimately overwhelming—with the broader institutional context. An essential work for those who pay attention to the effects of globalization—which is, or at least should be, nearly everyone.”
—Kirkus Reviews
FROM THE UK AND CANADA
“Arrival City brilliantly captures the breakneck pace of this ‘great migration,’ as the peasants of the poor world relocate to their own megacities – and ours. And it brings profoundly good news from the mean streets . . . Bottom of Form
Doug Saunders, a Canadian journalist skilled in both colourful reportage and sustaining a good argument, provides a badly needed progressive and optimistic narrative about our future. This is the perfect antidote to the doom-laden determinism of the last popular book on urbanisation, Mike Davis's Planet of Slums . . . This may be the best popular book on cities since Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities half a century ago. Certainly, it shares the same optimism about human aspiration amid overcrowded buildings and unplanned urban jungles, and the same plea for planners to help rather than stifle those dreams . . . Few books can make rationalists feel optimistic and empowered for the future. This one does.’ —Fred Pearce, The Guardian
“Brilliantly researched, hugely valuable new book. . . . A testament to the value of research and knowledge. . . . Arrival City is a masterpiece of reporting, one of the most valuable and lucid works on public policy published anywhere in years. That Saunders produced it now, as journalism is moving more and more toward the temporary, makes it even more remarkable. As the business he works in strives every day to give consumers less information more often, Saunders does the opposite. He takes the long view. He questions perceived wisdom and finds answers in research, reporting and facts.”
––Richard Warnica, Edmonton Journal (review also appeared in The Vancouver Sun and The Gazette)
“[This] book not only ranks as one of the year’s most engaging and important works of non-fiction. It gives a vital resource to everyone who wants to learn about the pursuit of the public good in an era of challenged or enfeebled nation-states. With sharply written case-studies from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the banlieues of Paris and the so-called ‘slums’ of Mumbai, Saunders shows that the ‘arrival city’ of informal communities, where migrants from rural hinterlands to urban centres gather, presents not simply one of the world’s most pressing problems. It also offers us the most promising solutions . . . For his part, Saunders extends the debate about globalisation and immigration to embrace the lessons of urban history. In his close attention to the voices of actual incomers – many of them Muslims in Europe, in all their diversity; even more not – he also supplies a hugely welcome antidote to the toxic nonsense about ‘Eurabia.’”
—Boyd Tonkin, Independent
“Provocative . . . Arrival City addresses the great neglected trend of the 21st century: urbanisation. Travelling across the globe, from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to Nairobi’s slums and Berlin’s Turkish enclave, Saunders weaves the tales of individual migrants through his vast story, that of the current, final great human movement – involving a third of our species – from the countryside to the city . . . A powerful work . . . But Arrival City is above all a warning. Migration is changing our world, and Saunders believes our reaction to it now will determine whether it can help eliminate poverty or whether it will cause catastrophe.”
—Rosamund Urwin, The Evening Standard
“Doug Saunders’s important new book, Arrival City, deals with an unglamorous but bitingly important issue: the largest ever human migration . . . While various academic titles have plumbed this phenomenon, no single book – until now – has breathed such life and human drama into it . . . The book engages while remaining serious. It pulls in the reader by centring its storyline on the fate of its numerous lead characters . . . The book tells a fascinating tale . . . Doug Saunders’s greatest strength lies in the global breadth of his reportage, which moves from the alleys of Mumbai to the soulless banlieues of Paris with the urgency of an international spy thriller. His evocative descriptions of open sewers, precarious dwellings, dark, dangerous spaces, noisy slum factories and the indomitable spirit of humanity transform a complex, serious subject into a page-turning read.”
—Eric Kaufmann, The Literary Review
“The book’s focus is not the migration itself, but what happens in the cities of arrival . . . Saunders’s approach is through anecdotes and vignettes, but he has done his legwork so they cumulate into a persuasive whole . . . Highly readable.”
—Paul Collier, The Financial Times
“Saunders looks beyond what he sees as a pretty transitional flight and instead focuses, to absorbing effect, on the destination cities . . . Recent books on the phenomenon of mass migration have been riddled with portents of gloom . . . Saunders’ thesis is far more positive…Serving as both a wide-ranging examination of ...
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Almost everyone in the world is being affected, in some way, by this movement. They may live where new people are arriving. They may be the ones arriving. Or, perhaps, they are ones left behind, but benefitting from funds sent back.
Some of these relocations are successful. Others fail dismally. It is important that these inevitable movements of people do succeed because it influences the well being of everyone in a city, region, country, or, even, the world. Saunders takes a look at successes and failures over time and points out the important differences. There is a lot to be learned here.
However, I was very disappointed in the writing style. You would expect a respected journalist to write with clarity and a crisp lively style. Instead Saunders is prone to long, convoluted, run-on sentences that often take a careful parsing to find what he really intends to say. To compound matters, the huge numbers of asides, included in parenthesis, are nearly as complex as the rest of their sentence.
So, be forewarned. This book is definitely worth reading, but be prepared to work hard to get the valuable information it has to offer.
As the population grows and people leave one type of life for another, it definitely affects the way the world looks as well as how we are able to deal with others. Saunders takes us into cultures and lands where we might not think we have any connection, and then he shows us how what happens halfway around the world does affect our lifestyle here.
You have only to look at the headlines of the day to see it to be true. Saunders' book is playing out right in front of us, and through his research we can better understand it and adapt rather than be left in the dark.
One thing that struck me is something that is universal: We are all busy, going about our lives, and sometimes we know so little about our very own surroundings. Forget about another country. To some, there own city is foreign to them. Looking at it through the lenses of Saunder's work, we can see that there are really more things that connect us than divide us.
ARRIVAL CITY isn't a book you will just skim through and put away. This is one you will be talking about for quite some time.
The good news is that the "meat" in the book makes reading it well worth reading.
The author's purpose is to tell us all about "arrival cities," their characteristics, how they can be made to work and how they can lead to failure. He also wants to give us examples of these communities in various places around the world. We get numerous detailed stories of people who move from a village to its related city. Arrival cities have the following characteristics:
* There is a communications network between the village(s) and the destination city.
* This network provides housing, job leads, community and security in the city.
* Those who move to the city send money back to the village to improve things there.
* Successful arrival cities allow a path to citizenship for foreigners, the possibility of owning a home, the opportunity to open a business and to get loans, and a path to the middle class, if not for the original immigrants, then for their offspring.
* Arrival cities do not automatically thrive on their own; they often need investments in infrastructure, housing, transportation, schools for the youth, language training, lighting and security, all this before sewage, electricity and water. Living in "close quarters" seems to be advantageous to the success of an arrival city, probably due to the ease of communications within such a structure.
And, what is some of the "meat" of the book?
* Perhaps the major event of the 21st century will be a great and final migration of people all around the world moving from rural to urban settings.
* This migration will involve two-to-three billion people. China has a constant "floating population" of between 200 and 300 million in its rural-to-urban migration.
* This final, worldwide migration is inevitable.
* Rural life is monotonous and frightening in contrast to urban living. "There is no romance in rural life. Rural life is the largest single killer of humans today...." High child-mortality and chronic-illnesses are commonalities.
* As of 2008, 3.9 billion people lived in villages, mostly in Africa or Asia. This is half the world's population. By 2050, 70% of the world will live in cities.
* With fewer people in the countryside, the reproduction rate there will drop; in the cities, the family size will drop below 2.1 children.
* About 2050, the world's population will stop growing.
* Between 2050 and the end of the century, the world will have reached a new, permanent equilibrium. There should be a substantial improvement in the rate of poverty.
* This shift mainly to cities will improve lives not only for those in cities, but also for those in villages. The village is transformed into a more urban and cultured place that can better support itself.
* Immigrants and arrival cities can be a major source of wealth-creation.
* Relatively few who move to the arrival city will move back to the village.
* Arrival cities do not cause population growth; in fact, they end it.
* Arrival cities are at the center of the world's future.
* It is the "informal" economy that allows newcomers to find work in the city; says the author, "Self-employment, the starting point of the arrival city, has become the global norm."
* South America is the first place in the world to have experienced the great post-war rural-to-urban migration; its migration is now practically complete. It is now the first fully urbanized area in the developed world.
* France was the first country in the world to experience an arrival city. Its existence led directly to the French Revolution.
There is not time here to review details of specific arrival cities, but it is worthwhile to point out that the author gives the British high marks in its support of arrival cities and new immigrants. The Germans went down the wrong road for many years, before improving things substantially. And in Brazil mistakes were made, but it learned from these mistakes. But the French have really done a bad job in this area, and they have suffered the consequences and will continue to do so. For example, in France, children born of immigrants are not French citizens at birth. As for the U.S., the author, who is British, does not spend much time writing about American situations, and I don't remember him rating us in this light.
Not all arrival cities house foreign residents, as we would think of between the U.S. and Mexico, or between Germany and the Turks and Poles. In India, the arrival cities are primarily housed by Indians from Indian villages. The same is true for China. And while arrival cities tend to be new developments on the outskirts of an existing city, they may also be an area within an existing city, e.g., an area within the city limits of Los Angeles, where a transition takes place as one group moves on and another moves in.
The author tells us that there have been others who have preceded him in writing about this phenomenon. But at least in one point he tells us that he is coining the phase, "arrival cities." If so, that is a notable achievement. One source that he gives reference to is a British geographer who coined the phrase, "migration transition." This has to do with the observation that there is a back-and-forth pattern between a village and its connected city. But at some point, there is a tipping point "where the entire family, and sometimes the entire village, shifted its allegiance and investments to the city and ceased to rely on agriculture."
From other studies, the author tells us, while some will return to the village, "those who stay are the toughest and smartest ones." Another phenomenon is that as the newcomers take housing from groups who can move on to "better" housing, it is the newcomers who tend to better than those who do not move on to the "better" housing. "Migrants from the villages come with very high expectations, often higher than those of the native-born city dwellers."
To outsiders, arrival cities may look like slums with little opportunity. But to those on the inside, these are slums of opportunity, of upper-mobility. An important point the author wants to make is that these cities are often misunderstood, which results in campaigns to destroy them and/or discourage their formation. But, per the author, these communities are really the future of the destination city, its future lifeblood.
One arrival city is worth a look. It is Shenzhen, which is across the Bay from Hong Kong. As recently as 1980, it was a fishing village of about 25,000 people. It became a community of about 14 million. It spawned a thriving middle-class, huge factories, and now has a world-class university in its midst.
Perhaps the following is a good summary of what the phenomenon of arrival cities is all about: "New people create new economies, and those economies develop best when those people, no matter how poor, are able to stage their arrival in an organic, self-generated manner." And to close, I will repeat two of the author's claims: Arrival cities are at the center of the world's future, and this worldwide migration of people from rural to urban settings is inevitable.
The contents of the book gave me information that I have found very valuable. I think if the book had been written in a more organized, smoother way, it would become a better seller. As it is, I still view it as a very important book.
