Planet of Slums

Photograph of a painting by Walter Handro

Cities in the abstract are the solution to the environmental crisis: urban density can translate into great efficiencies in land, energy, and resource use, while democratic public spaces and cultural institutions likewise provide qualitatively higher standards of enjoyment than individualized consumption and commodified leisure. - Pp. 134, Planet of Slums.

Truly, in the abstract, cities appear the solution to a lot of things, in an increasingly populated and economically stratified world. From the Le Corbusien dreams of the master planners to the amplifying growth of real estate values in the center of so many megacities (New York, included), there is a prevailing, abstract logic that a well-planned city may bring order, meaning, and stability of the masses who aggregate in the city center. Mike Davis' Planet of Slums is an assault on this logic, providing an overwhelming onslaught of statistics, anecdotes, and analysis that indicates that the modern city, in its incarnation as slum, shanty town, ghetto, favela, fails to deliver its denizens from poverty, inequality, or hopelessness.

Chaos, economic blight, and false hope seem to be the driving forces in the cities of the developing world, forcing the urban poor into worse and worse scenarios -- under-served by public infrastructure, lacking economic opportunity or social mobility, beset by public health epidemics, and trapped by government policies wrought from the high ideals of academia and Western think tanks. Rather than organic, democratic institutions, the poor parts of cities, ever increasing in size and population, seem like traps, sinkholes which draw in larger and larger populations, and provide no ready way out.

I wish I could say that under the reams of data damning the world's cities there is a trap door, leading to a brighter future. Simply not the case. While not an uplifting heart-warmer, Planet of Slums is a necessary look at some of the key demographic and social trends that will dictate the next epoch of our forward march through history, describing in terrifying detail of data and history the cauldrons from which the next genius may hail, but more likely, the next epidemic, revolution, famine, or genocide. Scary, sobering, and impossible to ignore.

Class Matters

I want to whole-heartedly recommend the collection of New York Times essays and reporting that has been published under the title Class Matters. Ranging from fairly data-driven studies of how people's perception and the economic reality of class has changed in America over decades, to closely studied features of a wide range of archetypes that populate the current understandings of class in America. The reporting and analysis is excellent, and paired with often moving personal accounts that give weight and texture to the more abstract data, make this collection very compelling. The Times has also made much of the reporting available online, here, a site which I have not yet explored in detail. I expect to address many of the specific themes raised by different articles in the collection on their own terms, when I am a little less side-tracked by work, but definitely recommend this book - perfect subway or airplane reading, and thought-provoking through and through.

The Rich Have Inherited the Earth

And we are them. Or so goes my simple reading of this New York Times review of a new book being published by UC-Davis economic historian Gregory Clark. The central thesis of Clark's work, based on analysis of economic data from the Middle Ages, is that demographic trends in those years lead to a downward social mobility where the progeny of the rich, imbued with a certain psychological disposition and value set, began to form a larger portion of society, fostering the shift from a cycle of subsistence to economic cycles where wealth was created, consolidated, and enhanced:

Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded.

As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. He has documented that several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped.

I won't form an opinion from the review alone, and hopefully will get to the book in the near future. In the mean time, you can read along with the folks at the Marginal Revolution blog.
Thanks to DL for forwarding the original article.

The New, New Thing by Michael Lewis

I am a fan of Michael Lewis the writer, from Liar's Poker and Moneyball and the occasional essay. I am a fan because stylistically, he is a simple, direct writer, observant and funny. But I am more a fan because thematically, Lewis engages topics like work, business culture, and sports, the substance of both life and dreams for so many people, myself included, and renders them with clarity, honesty, intelligence, and humor. Writing about work and business culture, Lewis treats it not just as a diminishing, soul-crushing exercise foisted upon us, but as occupation, something we do, and some of us, some times, with tenacity, zeal, and inspiration. He conveys jobs and entire industries truly as livelihoods, pulsing, consuming, informed by both biography and history. But with perspective throughout, chronicling his subject's mania with an offset balance of dry humor and an eye for the absurd.

That said, The New New Thing was an entertaining read, brisk, but not particularly insightful. Ostensibly chronicling the culture of entrepreneurship that drove the growth of Silicon Valley from the late 1970s through to the end of the 1990s, The New New Thing is basically a character study of Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape adorned with some half-drawn conclusions about character of entrepreneurship that was the spirit of the times. Jim Clark, as portrayed by Lewis, is an immensely interesting personality, and as much as business in the Valley is driven by cults of personality, I suppose it makes sense to latch on to that as anything else. It is disappointing, however that Lewis is not able to draw much by way of insight into what makes Silicon valley tick as a hot-bed of innovation, beyond a few obvious sentiments like technology is a young man's game, timing is everything, and California is a place where you can re-invent yourself.

I will transcribe one passage that I find modestly interesting:

[B]ack in 1921 [Thorstein] Veblen had predicted that engineers would one day rule in the U.S. economy. He argued that since the economy was premised on technology and the engineers were the only ones who actually understood how the technology worked, they would inevitably use their superior knowledge to seize power from the financiers and captains of industry who wound up on top at the end of the first round of the Industrial Revolution. After all, the engineers only needed to refuse to fix anything, and modern industry would grind to a halt. Veblen rejoiced at this prospect. He didn’t much care for financiers and captains. He thought they were parasites.
When I told Clark about Veblen, he did a good imitation of a man who was bored out of his skull. When he didn’t ant to seem too interested, he pretended he wasn’t paying attention. Now, his head splitting, he was particularly keen on the idea of the engineer grabbing power from the financier. “That’s happening right now,” he said. “Right here. In the Valley. The power is shifting to the engineers, who create the companies.”
That, Clark thought, was only as it should be.

Certainly a nice sentiment. Truer than before. yes. True, absolutely? Not yet. Thoughts?