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Planet of Slums Hardcover – March 1, 2006

by Mike Davis (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 246 ratings
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According to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world.

From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory.

Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt? Davis provides the first global overview of the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor. He surveys Hindu fundamentalism in Bombay, the Islamist resistance in Casablanca and Cairo, street gangs in Cape Town and San Salvador, Pentecostalism in Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro, and revolutionary populism in Caracas and La Paz.Planet of Slums ends with a provocative meditation on the “war on terrorism” as an incipient world war between the American empire and the new slum poor.
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  1. Print length
    228 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Verso
  4. Publication date
    March 1, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    5.73 x 0.9 x 8.54 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1844670228
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1844670222
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Urban theorist Davis takes a global approach to documenting the astonishing depth of squalid poverty that dominates the lives of the planet's increasingly urban population, detailing poor urban communities from Cape Town and Caracas to Casablanca and Khartoum. Davis argues health, justice and social issues associated with gargantuan slums (the largest, in Mexico City, has an estimated population of 4 million) get overlooked in world politics: "The demonizing rhetorics of the various international 'wars' on terrorism, drugs, and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus, favelas, and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion." Though Davis focuses on individual communities, he presents statistics showing the skyrocketing population and number of "megaslums" (informally, "stinking mountains of shit" or, formally, "when shanty-towns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery") since the 1960s. Layered over the hard numbers are a fascinating grid of specific area studies and sub-topics ranging from how the Olympics has spurred the forceful relocation of thousands (and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands) of the urban poor, to the conversion of formerly second world countries to third world status. Davis paints a bleak picture of the upward trend in urbanization and maintains a stark outlook for slum-dwellers' futures.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“In this trenchantly argued book, Mike Davis quantifies the nightmarish mass production of slums that marks the contemporary city. With cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed Structural Adjustment Programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Scourge of neo-liberal nostrums, Davis debunks the irresponsible myth of self-help salvation, showing exactly who gets the boot from ‘bootstrap capitalism.’ Like the work of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffans over a century ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently clear.”—Michael Sorkin

“A profound enquiry into an urgent subject ... a brilliant book.”—Arundhati Roy

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso (March 1, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 228 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1844670228
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1844670222
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.73 x 0.9 x 8.54 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 246 ratings

About the author

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Mike Davis

Mike Davis

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Mike Davis is the author of several books including City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, Planet of Slums, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in Papa'aloa, Hawaii.

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4.4 out of 5 stars
246 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book informative and interesting. They describe it as well-written and easy to read, with a good depiction of macro-forces. Readers appreciate the visual quality, finding it gives a good depictian of urban poverty and atrocious living conditions.

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14 customers mention "Information quality"14 positive0 negative

Customers find the book informative and revealing about urban poverty. They say it's essential reading for global citizens, interesting, and good for political science or urban studies students. The book provides useful statistics and keeps readers interested.

"...This is an excellent book that you should read with _The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu_ also by Mike Davis...." Read more

"...Davis displays some eloquent prose and solid research, but he may have lost sight of the surplus of humanity living in slums." Read more

"Ok, this book is actually incredible. About half of it was assigned in a Development Studies class of mine, but I willingly read the whole thing...." Read more

"he has some points clearly. its nice to read and very interesting for everybody who wants to know more about a topic that is often treated in a very..." Read more

7 customers mention "Readability"5 positive2 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and interesting. They say it's well-written and enjoyable to read.

"he has some points clearly. its nice to read and very interesting for everybody who wants to know more about a topic that is often treated in a very..." Read more

"...replete with charts, tables and footnotes, but is nevertheless very easy to read. Which probably accounts for Davis' popularity as an author...." Read more

"...Not a pleasant read but something which is a sober reminder that growth rates alone do not translate automatically into the reduction of poverty or..." Read more

"...His style of writing is superb and I thoroughly enjoyed his descriptions of the various megacities he described...." Read more

4 customers mention "Visual quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the visual quality of the book. It provides a good depiction of macro-forces and amazing details.

"...So much detail! So much information, and yet so well presented that I read it 6 months ago and still recall all the major points...." Read more

"Davis's Planet of Slums is a must read for urban scholars as it gives a good depiction of the macro-forces art play that increase the amount and..." Read more

"A difficult read but necessary information to know! It paints a realistic picture of our world's slums and the growing epidemic of these living..." Read more

"Amazing details!" Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Jerry Richardson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Problems of urbanization in the Third World
    Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    This book deals with the rise of urbanization in the Third World now and in the future. The consequences of millions of people packed into cities lacking the infrastructure to handle them are a public health and ecological disaster for their inhabitants and ultimately for the rest of the world. Imagine living in a city where there is one toilet per hundreds or even thousands of people. It is hard for people living in North America to reckon with this because, as Mike Davis points out, the worst examples of this are hidden in undeveloped areas of the Eastern Hemisphere. This is an excellent book that you should read with _The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu_ also by Mike Davis.

    UPDATE(O4/05/2011): Books that I recommend to read with this: _Urban Guerrilla Warfare_ by Anthony James Joes, _New Religions as Global Cultures: _Making the Human Sacred_ by Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, and _The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity_ by Phillip Jenkins.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Dr. Michael A. Rinella
    5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading
    Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Planet of Slums has several arguments but I would distill the primary ones as follows:

    1. The end of the Cold War "liberated" capital to spread to all those portions of the world formerly dominated by the Soviet Union and its allies. Parallel to this economic theories known as "neoliberalism" arose in the 1970s and became dominant by the 1990s. Neoliberal ideology advocates deregulation of industry, the downsizing of government social programs, and a broken "truce" with labor that in the US had existed in fragile form since the New Deal.

    2. This spread of capitalism, often referred to as "globalization," has produced for the first time a truly global labor force. The competitive pressure is so intense, as any job is better than no job at all, that workers the world over are willing to take what they can. The world is teeming with an awful, terrible, "surplus humanity" living marginalized lives of poverty, misery, and violence.

    3. At the same time, the world's population keeps getting bigger, and more and more urban. This in turn continues to expand the potential labor pool, driving wages down even further. The wage gap between the rich and poor, both between nations *and* within nations, grows wider and deeper. The naked reality of this becomes more visible with each succeeding economic crisis.

    4. Rather than face the consequences of what neoliberal ideology was allowed to unleash global elites, led by the military might of the United States, whose corporations continue to amass enormous profits, have focused on expanding and developing their instruments of order-keeping, cleverly disguised under misleading umbrellas of "wars on ...". Terrorism, drugs, piracy, are just so many smokescreens.

    5. This process cannot continue permanently. There is a simmering anger beneath the surface that, for now, expresses itself only in isolated outbursts that high-tech campaigns of repression are capable of pacifying. Someday, however, the simmer may reach a boil and the eruption will be more than any nation can handle.
    31 people found this helpful
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  • Izaak VanGaalen
    4.0 out of 5 stars A Vision of Malthusian Dystopias
    Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2006
    Verified Purchase
    Sometime during the writing of this book - 2005 - the global urban population surpassed the global rural population. It has been estimated that both populations stand at about 3.2 billion. What is startling is that Mike Davis has calculated that the rural population has reached its peak and will begin to decline by 2020, and that all future world population growth will be in cities, primarily megacities (8 million or more) and hypercities (20 million or more). The total world population is expected to peak at 10 billion in the year 2050. If I'm still alive, I will be 95. I hope to experience peak global population, even though my actuarial tables would indicate otherwise.

    This massive movement to the city has not been accompanied by industialization and development, instead there has been massive urbanization without economic growth. The future cities of glass and steel envisioned by urbanists have not materialized, instead the urban poor are squatting in crudely constructed slum dwellings on the periphery of cities. A "surplus of humanity" is accumulating on the outskirts of urban centers, an "accumulation of the wretched."

    It is no surprise that Davis grew up and currently lives in the Los Angeles area. (He also wrote "City of Quartz," a book about Los Angeles.) Angelenos tend to see the world as it is seen on television or at the movies. Davis' images of Third World slums are those of "Blade Runner" or "Escape from New York". One wonders if Davis has ever visited a Third World slum or interviewed one of its denizens. By referring to them as "the wretched," he will never be accused of being too close to his subject.

    Why the massive movement toward cities? And why is this dystopian urbanization occurring on this scale? Davis puts the blame squarely on the neoliberal policies of the IMF. In the late 70's and early 80's, the IMF imposed its structural adjustment program (SAP). It was a one-size-fits-all program for debt burdened Third World countries to open up their economies and theoretically participate in global economy. The program (SAP) called for the deregulation of agriculture and the downsizing of the public sector. (Read also Joseph Stiglitz' "Globalization and its Discontents.") The consequences of this policy are still being debated, but Davis focuses only on the negatives. He points out that hundreds of thousands of workers - millions - worldwide are being pushed from the countryside without the pull of jobs in the cities. The results are masses of humanity in shantytowns on the periphery of urban centers.

    If this book sounds extremely negative, it's because it is. Davis criticizes governments for not building enough public housing, and when they do, it's not in the right place and it lacks community. He complains when squatters do not have title to their land or cannot formally rent their shanties, but he also criticizes Hernando De Soto's campaign to do just that. He claims it would lead to further stratification and exploitation of the poor.

    Davis sees no solutions to the current trends. He ends the book with the following image: "Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into the shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side."

    I thought immediately of that scene in the last "Terminator" movie. Davis displays some eloquent prose and solid research, but he may have lost sight of the surplus of humanity living in slums.
    46 people found this helpful
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  • Adrian Rodarte
    5.0 out of 5 stars Buen libro
    Reviewed in Mexico on February 14, 2022
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    Un libro más al estante.
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  • Antonio de Pablo
    5.0 out of 5 stars Todo muy bien
    Reviewed in Spain on May 16, 2024
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    Bien
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars A book everyone should read to help understand causes of poverty
    Reviewed in Australia on July 5, 2019
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    The chapter on the Congo and witchcraft was really compelling. How people's faith in elections and the state was eradicated through western economic hegemony which caused people to retreat into fantastic and bizarre religious practices and beliefs.
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  • Niki
    5.0 out of 5 stars happy with the purchse
    Reviewed in Canada on May 12, 2015
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    Happy with the shipping. Great book by Mike Davis. Read it a while ago and just needed to own a copy.
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  • Pereira Santos Janaina
    5.0 out of 5 stars Très accessible
    Reviewed in France on April 4, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Excellent.
    Je recommande vivement ce livre à toutes les personnes ayant envie d'ouvrir leur horizons et de comprendre les phénomènes urbains.
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