Cities 07

Wilson’s work on US ghettos and Davis’ work on third world ghettos share little more than theme. Ghettos in the US are defined more by unemployment, racial divisions and definable geographic boundaries. Davis’ bleak picture of the humanitarian faux pas that are ghettos in the third world is defined by little or no employment and a scope so much larger than the US ghettos that racial division and geographic boundaries become wholly irrelevant. Just from the sheer number of the lowest class, Davis is forced to make little mention of the stark class divides. Also attributable to these sheer numbers is their geographic distribution: they are everywhere. It almost seems better to be poor in the US than anything below rich in the third world.

As a whole, third world ghettos are much more violent than ghettos in the US. Death squads and paramilitary groups roaming the streets not only ignored by, but oft at the behest of, authorities cause more harm in third world slums than any race riots in the US ever did. Also of note is the dissimilarity between housing methods exercised in the US and third world ghettos. Public housing programs in the US suck, but they do exist and people use them as a crutch or a bootstrap, depending on your political view. Completely available government funded public housing in the third world does not exist and can not effectively exist because of the huge amount and proportion of the population that is homeless. It does not help that people are sleeping on the sidewalk en masse, building their own shantytowns, subdividing large lots without government approval and/or waging squatter wars with authorities in third world nations in an often vain attempt to secure the basic human need of shelter. The one conclusion that can be drawn from this is the presence of an authority with a semblance of respect for humanity in the US and an authority either unable, unwilling or both to enforce basic order in an attempt to benefit people. (You may now quibble with my supposition that authority in the US may actually be beneficial… I think it has more to do with enculturation of individuals coupled with lower population densities. Authority is pretty dumb everywhere.)

These ghettos do share some similarity when not studied as a whole, however. The transformation of previously upper class neighborhoods to ghettos and slums is not as well restricted to the urban core in third world nations as in the US. Many third world nations lack the means to track these urban changes but the results are similar: quality of life, housing and general environment degrades. The racially segregated aspect of US ghettos was echoed in UK controlled Hong Kong. The geographical separation by ethnicity in Hong Kong was in the form of floating slums inhabited by the Tanka and Hakka people largely segregated from the Han. While Davis doesn’t explicitly state any other ethnic divisions, it is easy to understand that other examples must exist given the number of people living in these conditions and the diverse nature of urban societies.