Planet of Slums

An epigraph by Onookome Okome sets the tone for the chapter and the book: “We live in the age of the city. The city is everything to us—it consumes us, and for that reason we glorify it” (1).

Davis begins the first chapter with a proclamation: Urban populations surpass rural populations for the first time in history. This unprecedented rate of urbanization is occurring faster than 20th century experts predicted, particularly in China, India, and Brazil. More people became city dwellers during the 1980s in China than in all of Europe during the 19th century. This new growth has created megacities (8 million or more inhabitants) and hypercities (20 million or more) and has raised the threat of poverty for people in these megalopolises and those in the smaller, second-tier cities, places lacking resources and planning to provide citizens adequate services.

People born in rural areas are more frequently moving to urban ones, while the growth of cities is occurring so fast that city sprawl often incorporates rural areas as it grows. Many regions of the world (from India to Indonesia to Latin America) are experiencing a shift in the divide between urban and rural, falling into what urban theorist Thomas Sieverts called in-between cities—weblike places with no center and no peripheries.