Planet of Slums and Roots of Inequality

This is the fifth model of the roots of inequality after the two different emphases of Jared Diamond in Collapse and in Guns, Germs and Steel, and the original presentations by Edward Wilson and Niall Ferguson.

The heart of the thinking of Mike Davis in Planet of Slums is to be found in his concept of “Treason of the State” and the differential effects on women and children of slum ecology.

The essence of the concept of “treason of the State” is the quote which opens Chapter 3 on page 50: “ If unmitigated capitalism has a mainly unacceptable face, a corrupt state acting on behalf of the rich is still worse. In such circumstances, little is to be gained by even trying to improve the system.” Alan Gilbert and Peter Ward: “Housing, the State and the Poor”

In a section entitled “Broken Promises and Stolen Dreams on page 61, he opens with a statement which is really a question: “The slum was not the inevitable future.” So why did slums proliferate on the edges of the urban core?

In your judgment, should the state be committed to social housing? Yes No Undecided

Should the government in America be committed to social housing for all Americans? Yes No Undecided

Should the government in America be committed to not allow slums? Yes No Undecided

Should the state in America be committed to job development? Yes No Undecided

Should America be committed to job development for all Americans? Yes No Undecided

Should the American government be committed to combatting slums? Yes No Undecided

As the class has been introduced to the slums of the world, is the following quote a fair assessment? “The state does nothing here. It provides no water, no schools, no sanitation, no roads, no hospitals….residents bought water from private dealers and relied on vigilante croups for security—the police visited only to collect bribes.” The Guardian, 2002

Key quote from Mike Davis “…the idea of an interventionist state strongly committed to social housing and job development seems either a hallucination or a bad joke because governments long ago abdicated any serious effort to combat slums and redress urban marginality.” p. 62

Is the following quote accurate in the view of the class in the Third World (the developing world)? “…public and state-assisted housing in the Third World has primarily benefited the urban middle classes and elites, who expect to pay low taxes while receiving high levels of municipal services.” Yes No

Is it valid in America? Yes No

A central element of the Davis analysis is the role of the state in the following assessment by Frank Snowden accurate for housing in America? “ By the end of the century, rent had increased fivefold while the inhabitants of the city had grown poorer. Ironically, moreover, the highest rents per square metre were for the most dismal rooms in the slums. Because these rooms cost the least in absolute terms, the demand for them was greatest. Unhappily, the demand for slum accommodation grew with increasing poverty, thus giving further twists to the rent spiral affecting those least able to pay.”

The following quote is the view of Davis for housing in Nairobi, Kenya: “Nairobi’s slums, meanwhile, are vast rent plantations owned by politicians and the upper middle class. Although most of the private rental development ‘has no formal legal basis…property relations and ownership [thanks to a corrupt political system] exists in a de facto sense.’ ” p. 87 Is this assessment valid for housing in America? Yes No

The following is an assessment by Nientied and van der Linden of housing in Pakistan where the state has: “ ‘…totally failed to provide land for housing low income group.’ the fringe has been illegally subdivided, as noted earlier, by syndicates of public officials, corrupt police, and middlemen known as dalals. At the end of the day, slum –dwellers have done little more than lease patronage. ‘Since the whole operation is illegal, demands by definition, are always for favours, rather than for rights.’ ” p. 88 In America, has the government failed to provide for housing needs of low-income groups? Yes No

An element of “Treason of the State” for Davis is the following quote: “In China the urban edge…has become the arena of a vast, one-dash sided social struggle between city governments and poor farmers…traditional working-class neighborhoods and villages are routinely razed for more upscale developments, often to the advantage of corrupt officials and party leaders. When local protest, they end up being confronted by paramilitary police and often face prison terms.” p. 91

This is an element of “Treason of the State” for Davis is the following quote: “Urban segregation is not a frozen status quo, but rather a ceaseless social war in which the state intervenes regularly in the name of “progress,” “beautification,” and even “social justice for the poor” to redraw spatial boundaries to the advantage land owners, foreign investors, elite homeowners, and middle-class commuters.” p. 98

The second midterm questions ask the reader if individual illustrative videos are examples of “Treason of the State” in the view of Mike Davis and why based on the first 150 pages of “Planet of Slums”.

The Korean video of a mother picking trash in a vast field of trash raises two questions: Is this “Treason of the State”? Yes No

The second question is whether governments could have acted differently In the western Indian city of Pune, Saru Waghmare started picking up trash at age 10. This had been her family’s work for generations. But in 2008 the city awarded her cooperative with a contract to collect trash from 400,000 households. They received uniforms, gloves, pushcarts, modest health insurance and a regular income. They get to keep and resell recyclables.

The Economist, November, 2013 Saru Waghmare “Before, I would spend the whole day out in all weather, fighting off dogs in containers. Now I have dignity and I can save for my old age. I feel my future is bright.”

Suresh Jagtap, Pune’s Commissioner of Waste Management, says the new scheme saves the city $2.2 million a year. The reason is waste transportation costs are one-tenth those of other cities because the pickers sort the trash closest to where they collect it. The Economist, 2013

In Bogotá, Columbia they have started compensating 15,000 waste pickers paying $44 per ton of garbage collected. Brazil has made scavenging an official occupation. It’s one million catadores have raised recycling rates for cardboard and paper to 90%. Cooperatives can get grants to buy equipment. There is now a “global alliance of waste pickers”. The Kennedy School at Harvard has a non-profit global network called “WIEGO”