Roots of Inequality-Mike Davis’ Theory of Inequality

The central point is that the great challenges of global sustainability will be addressed, in part, in an urban context.  And planning for improving the environmental health of women and children must consider the problems they encounter in the slums of the world.

“Not all urban poor, to be sure, live in slums, nor are all slum dwellers poor…Although the two categories obviously overlap in their majority, the number of urban poor is considerably greater:  at least one-half of the world’s urban population as defined by relative national poverty thresholds.”

“The majority of the world’s urban poor no longer live in inner cities “The majority of the world’s urban poor no longer live in inner cities.  Since 1970 the larger share of world urban population growth has been absorbed by slum communities on the periphery of Third World cities.”

From the perspective of the environmental health of women and children, and how hard it is to improve it, the following comment by Davis is instructive:  “A migrant stream of polluting, toxic, and often illegal industries also seeks the permissive obscurity of the periphery.”

Civil conflict, failed states, the aftermaths of genocide, and violent inter-state conflict are, regrettably, on-going sources of new international refugees and internally displaced people.

“…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.”

“Urban elites and the middle classes in the Third World have also been extraordinarily successful in evading municipal taxation.” “…the urban rich in Africa, south Asia, and much of Latin America are rampantly, even criminally under-taxed by local governments.”

“Urban status quo 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 of landowners, foreign investors, elite homeowners, and middle-class commuters.”

“If natural hazards are magnified by urban poverty, new and entirely artificial hazards are created by poverty’s interactions with toxic industries, anarchic traffic, and collapsing infrastructures.” “All the classical principles of urban planning, including the preservation of open space and separation of noxious land uses from residences, are stood on their heads in poor cities.” Garbage Dump Syndrome: “a concentration of toxic industrial activities such as metal plating, dyeing, rendering, tanning, battery recycling, casting, vehicle repair, chemical manufacture, and so on, which middle classes would never tolerate in their own districts.”