Planet of Slums

Written by Mike Davis

Narrated by Mike Lenz

The classic, brilliant, bestselling account of the rise of the world's slums, where, according to the United Nations, one billion people now live.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jun 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705235980

Mike Davis

Mike Davis (1946–2022) was the author of City of Quartz as well as Dead Cities and The Monster at Our Door, co-editor of Evil Paradises, and co-editor—with Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller—of Under the Perfect Sun (The New Press).

Reviews for Planet of Slums

[Keenan Hilton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this important and devastating work, Davis provides a comprehensive analysis of the global rise of slums. In the book, he jumps around the globe in a dizzying manner, trying together what must be hundreds of studies in dozens of cities. On the downside: I think this book might be best comprehended with text in hand as it's easy to lose track of where you are in the world with the audiobook. Also, it's a bit distracting that the narrator of the audiobook doesn't know how to pronounce the names of cities, slums, authors and organizations. Overall, would recommend the book though.

[Jados Moreno · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A damning indictment of the global neoliberal consensus. Davis illustrates what an increasingly fincialized world economy looks like on the ground ; human warehousing in the garbage that leaks down from the first world.

This book feels like a window into the kind of dystopian future so ubiquitous in sci-fi. A planet of aggregating mega cities filled mostly with the profoundly poor, the wealthy looming over the whole thing a in a green zone penthouse.

This will stick with me for a long time.

[Lisema Matsietsi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. It has changed my perspective on slums. I am a black South African who grew up knowing township infrastructure inadequacy. Many of us used to blame the lack of infrastructure on the government's lack of service delivery. It took this book to change my perspective. I now realise that as a banker we are contributing to the creation of slums.

How so?: In South Africa, one of the reasons for taking up unsecured/personal loans is extending a home or erecting a backyard dwelling to generate income. Bankers don't require approved plans as a condition to grant the loan but rather focus on the financial documents submitted.

Externalities: There is also a risk associated with asking for city plans as this might increase the backlog in city offices thus corruption might also increase.