Question
Provide a summary of the chapter, discussing its main arguments and claims (15 points). We have discussed theories that have tried to understand movement from rural to urban areas. Briefly discuss how the findings of this chapter fit in with these ideas (5 points). (5 points for overall writing).
Response Paper for The Planet of Slums’ Chapter 1 (“The Urban Climacteric”)
In “The Urban Climacteric”, Okome discusses the scale and velocity of urbanization of developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Notably, the author states that the majority of the Third World Countries, such as China have been urbanizing at high speed since the 1980s, with several countryside’s evolving to small and large cities (Davis 9). Even though Okome acknowledges that urbanization in a majority of the Third World Countries will rise significantly in the next few years, he observes that it will be driven by the reproduction of poverty, rather than supply of jobs, and a considerable rise in slums that will outpace urbanization.
Okome’s primary argument in Chapter 1 is that urbanization will radically change from the building of sustainable cities to postmodern slums embedded in poverty. Notably, the author observes that the majority of the population that migrates to cities in the next few years will be forced to establish settlements on un-serviced peripheral land while relying on informal subsistence work (Davis 17). In fact, with reference to current statistics, Okome states that in some countries such as India, out of 500,000 people who migrate to Delhi each year, 400,000 ends up in slums, leading India’s capital to have a slum population of more than 10 million in 2015 (Davis 18). Arguably, the drastic change in urbanization is as a result of a decline in income and supply of jobs within metropolitan areas, since cities in Third World countries continue to experience a significant reduction in economic growth. Therefore with the negative economic development and limited growth in infrastructure, individuals who migrate to the cities will be forced to establish postmodern slums for settlement, and rely heavily on informal employment.
Furthermore, the author emphasizes that compared to urbanization, slum growth will increase significantly in the next few years. Notably, echoing the findings of John and Godfrey (130), Okome states that about 80 percent of cities’ growth in Third World countries is as a result of people who build their dwellings in shantytowns largely underserved by established utilities and municipal transport. From this statistic, Okome claims that although the cities will continue to grow in the future, they will not develop out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists (Davis 19). Instead, they will be outpaced by thousands of slums which will inhabit millions of individuals who migrate from rural areas.
Findings from chapter 1 conform to previous theories, such as the Marxist theory, that try to explain the movement of people from rural to urban areas. Notably, current theories suggest that the population surplus does not move; instead, the typical peasant is driven out, leading to several economic and social consequences for the rural areas (Theodore 17). Similarly, finding from this chapter show that global forces “push” people from the countryside to the city despite the metropolitan regions being weakened by debt and economic depression (Davis 17). For instance, the author observed that global forces in the form of policies of agricultural deregulation by the IMF and World Bank, generated an exodus of rural labour to urban slums (Davis 15). As the national market became highly deregulated, poor peasants were exposed to multiple risks which forced some of them to abandon agriculture and move to the urban areas in search of alternative job opportunities. Therefore, results from this chapter reveal that rural-urban migration results from global forces that push population surplus to the city.
Works Cited
Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. New York, Verso Books, 2007.
John, Browder, and Godfrey, Brian. Rainforest Cities: Urbanization, Development, and Globalization of the Brazilian Amazon. 1st ed., New York, Columbia University Press, 1997.
Theodore, Papaelias. “A Theory on the Urban Rural Migration.” International Journal of Economic and Business Administration, vol. 1, no. 4, 2013, pp. 17-30.
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