The classic, brilliant, best-selling account of the rise of the world's slums, where, according to the United Nations, one billion people now live
Mike Davis is the author of several books including Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
A profound enquiry into an urgent subject . a brilliant book.
*Arundhati Roy*
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 programs leading
to a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor . Like the work
of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens over a century
ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently
clear.
*Michael Sorkin*
The Raymond Chandler of urban geography . In Planet of Slums,
Davis's genre is the global disaster movie, as directed by the
chroniclers of Victorian poverty: Engels, Booth and Dickens. The
scale of modern squalor revealed in his brilliant survey dwarfs its
predecessors . a coruscating tragedy.
*Independent*
The astonishing facts hit like anvil blows . Davis has produced a
heartbreaking book that hammers the reader a little further into
the ground with the blow of each new and shocking statistic.
*Financial Times*
A terrifying, magisterial work.
*Harper’s*
There can be no doubt about the achievement of Planet of Slums . it
forces us, angrily, to confront the deplorable realities of slum
existence and the limitations of slum policies in many developing
countries.
*Times (London)*
While many case studies have described what it means to reside in a
favela, basti, kampung, gecekondu or bidonville, Davis provides a
properly global portrait . And whereas urban specialists have
focused on questions of space and land use in their discussions of
slums, and developmentalists on the issue of their 'informal
economies', Planet of Slums commands our attention as a broader
historical synthesis of the two.
*New Left Review*
Davis's descriptions of the conditions endured by slum-dwellers
provide reason enough to read this book. His analysis is full of
gripping stories from globalization's frontline.
*New Statesman*
Packed with rigorous analysis and heart-stopping facts, this is a
brilliant exploration of how millions of poor city-dwellers
worldwide are being driven to the squalid periurban shadowlands of
today's megaslums . Davis's book is absolutely vital reading.
*Big Issue*
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |