| Popis: |
In this selection from Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World (2010), Canadian journalist Doug Saunders changes the debate about global slums by changing the fundamental narrative of their function in the age of globalization. “What will be remembered about the twenty-first century, except perhaps the effects of a changing climate,” he writes, “is the great, and final, shift of human populations out of rural, agricultural life and into cities.” He notes policies of the past have often led to “mismanaged urbanization,” and warns that we must not make similar mistakes again. Saunders brings new ways of thinking to the subject of global poverty. He visited and studied the slums of some twenty cities on five continents, engaging in a process of direct observation combined with interviews with the newly arrived slum dwellers themselves. He begins with a generalized overview of how the historic new surge in global urbanization leads always to “arrival cities” – that is, the chosen destination city of a specific immigrant family – and then considers several specific cases including Shenzhen, Los Angeles, and Mumbai. He finds that arrival cities can be successes or failures. Shenzhen, for example, is a case of “arrested development.” Although Shenzhen claims to be the first city in China to reform the rigid hukou system that restricts free education, subsidized housing, and other benefits to people with local residence status, only about 15 percent of the immigrant population actually qualifies. By contrast, Los Angeles and Mumbai are notable successes. In Los Angeles, Latino immigrants can become the owners of small businesses. And in Mumbai, the Parab family from rural Maharashtra state, find that they can turn part of their concrete-block shanty into rental income and eventually move into an actual apartment. |
