Please make sure you’ve read the articles from last Thursday, about shrinking cities, and then read two articles about extremely large cities:
Learning from slums — This is a relatively recent article from the Boston Globe that made a lot of challenging and interesting assertions, such as:
…given the reality that poverty exists and seems unlikely to disappear soon, squatter cities can also be seen as a remarkably successful response to adversity – more successful, in fact, than the alternatives governments have tried to devise over the years. They also represent the future. An estimated 1 billion people now live in them, a number that is projected to double by 2030. The global urban population recently exceeded the rural for the first time, and the majority of that growth has occurred in slums. According to Stewart Brand, founder of the Long Now Foundation and author of the forthcoming book Whole Earth Discipline, which covers these issues, “It’s a clear-eyed, direct view we’re calling for – neither romanticizing squatter cities or regarding them as a pestilence. These things are more solution than problem.”
The strange allure of the slums — This is a similar article from the Economist from two years ago that talks not just about Mumbai and the Dharavi slums, but also about Nairobi and its immense Kibera slum.
Most of what makes Kibera interesting, though, is what it shares with other African slums. The density (shacks packed so tightly that many are accessible only on foot); the dust (in the dry seasons) and the mud (when it rains); the squalor (you often have to pick your way through streams of black ooze); the hazards (low eaves of jagged corrugated iron); and the litter, especially the plastic (Kibera’s women, lacking sanitation and fearing robbery or rape if they risk the unlit pathways to the latrines, resort at night to the “flying toilet”, a polythene bag to be cast from their doorway, much as chamber pots were emptied into the street below in pre-plumbing Edinburgh). Most striking of all, to those inured to the sight of such places through photography, is the smell. With piles of human faeces littering the ground and sewage running freely, the stench is ever-present.
Of course, one problem with enormous cities is in the news right now: the quick spread of epidemic illness! Remember, though: You cannot get swine flu by eating pork, and the best thing to do to stay well is to wash your hands frequently!
See you Tuesday night.
The current frenzy surrounding Swine Flu is absurd. Where are the major media network’s pandemic stories regarding lice? Tapeworm? Both have caused more issues to children’s health than Swine Flu this month. Im glad it’s being contained, there were a few cases in the bronx and queens where kids were sent home and entire schools were sterilized…good that’s proper procedure. But to warn the country with scary red flashing news alerts? To Color Canada Red on a map from 6 reported cases (Daily Show)? With headlines like these, your creating your own panic….and yet not one person has died from it in the USA. Maybe its just an excuse to give one pharmaceutical company a boost in their monthly numbers who knows. Someone should do some investigative reporting on that.
Class discussion’s tonight was really interesting. I cannot image this people from slums being forced to leave their houses. Even though it is really sad knowing how these people can actually survive in such of conditions, in some way I think they feel happy the way they live.
It is impossible for them and for the government to solve the situation at once. They live in an isolated world where everything seems to be perfect because they do not know any other manner to subsist. In order to bring help to improve better qualities of life the government needs to create different programs that make these people conscious about the gravity of this way of leaving. The government should create programs that support and show among people that they deserve another quality of life where they can have more opportunities.
Of courses, this would be a long journey of risk that the government would have to make in order to develop a better life for these citizens. But it is better to attempt to change a situation than to stay stuck doing nothing when there are so many people out there that would thank from the bottom of their hearts a little bit of help.
In “The Strange Allure of The Slum” there is a lot to learn about the way African people live. America has slums too, but not like Africa. In Africa, it’s a way of life. Remember, that they got that way through bad government or leaders, famine, disease, death, and wars. These things left them exploited and depressed. Everything was taken from them and everytime they tried to rebuild their lives there was always an issue that caused an enemy to come in and steal, kill, and destroy them. Another reason why they live in the slums is because their leaders have not lived up to their expectation. They lost trust in the government and outside forces to help them. They would rather accept their lot and find a solution to helping their children and families survive in the villages. My thoughts are similar to theirs in that nobody can stop the poverty, crime, and wars that quick. Money and political resolution is the key to help them. What the poor villager’s want is an economic incentive. Such as new jobs, better businessess, better education and equipment to build nicer homes. The people of Kibera are better-classed. They pull together and are determined to do something about their slums even if the government doesn’t.
Living in one of the most crowded cities in the entire world, New York City, I don’t feel annoyed of the swine flu itself rather than the panic around it. I believe it is more that the media has hyped the issue of Swine Flu for commercial purposes. It brings me to wonder that is there anything more important to worry about than a flu which has only killed one person in the United States?