planet of slums
OBE # 5
“Housing is a verb.” With capitalism ruling, housing is a commodity. On this planet, we are forced to pay for space to survive. Because of the economic inequality that exists, many people end up living in hazardous environments.
Davis explains that most homelessness and poverty is underreported and ignored, just as Engels pointed out that Manchester’s impoverished citizens were hidden from view, segregated and blocked by the city architecture. In Wilson’s analysis of the ghetto, a major ingredient of the problem is isolation. The connecting theme in all of these passages is the power over people, and the distance between the powerful and the powerless. Whether it is physical or not, the rich have claimed space leaving the poor with nowhere to live but slums, etc. Overall, cities and citizens should take responsibility rather than turning their backs on the crisis of slums, squatters, and homelessness. Instead, the poor are marginalized, hidden, and ignored.
Squatters are blocked from sight, living in hazardous locations or useless territories. Today, most slums worldwide are on the outskirts of cities, far from the center. (Davis) By pushing the slums out of the city and keeping homogenous enclaves together throughout the city, the state uses segregation as a way to dish out resources unevenly. In Buenos Aires, Davis mentions that it is common to see walls dividing suburbs and shantytowns.
Davis and Engels do not glorify poverty. Davis calls the peripheral slums of the third world a “human dump”. First world countries continue to ignore the global disaster, because the bourgeoisie rely on the third world over-production so that they can participate in over-consumption. The visual of a human dump is disturbing; we are throwing away people like old furniture or used tires.
Space is valuable, and people must fight with the authorities in order to take up space and to be recognized as citizens. Davis mentions the revolutionary squatters who occupied land by making settlements that were torn down by the police, but then rebuilt again and again. Confrontation is necessary when the tool a society uses to form a hierarchy is to segregate individuals.
Davis expands beyond Wilson and Engels, looking at the planet rather than individual cities. As a Westerner, it is impossible for me to understand what it means when someone writes that 99% of Ethiopia consists of slums. I can’t imagine it because I am so far away, physically and emotionally. It is important that we recognize that the global perspective is much more telling of our individual position on the planet.