Babak Fakhamzadeh
Entertaining enough, but the book feels formulaic and is filled with one dimensional characters that, moving through the book, lose even the little depth they started with.Similar to Cixin's short story [b:The Wandering Earth 13554058 The Wandering Earth Liu Cixin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1332444998s/13554058.jpg 19123664], this is more like a concept for something that could be long and rich, but now is just a light framework of ideas that sometimes makes some sense, but too often does not.
Marshall looks at 10 broadly defined locations through a geopolitical lens. Often fascinating, sometimes lucid, but also, too often, not about geography at all, but about psychology, or simply politics, or history. In other words, a very nice book, but not exactly delivering what is promised.
Here's the list marshall discusses.
1. Russia's need for protecting itself along natural boundaries has resulted in the current expanse of the country, as well as its political stance on the world stage. The planes of Poland and of Moldova give easy access to Russia, hence the need for Russia being able to exert control on these regions. And Sevastopol, in the Crimea, is Russia's best warm water port, up till recently in the Ukraine. So, when western powers were trying to pull the Ukraine into a European sphere of influence, dangling a promise of EU membership and possibly even NATO membership, Russia had no choice but to take control of the Crimea, in order to not lose the lease on the port.
In Siberia, the vast expanses prevent particularly China from military expansion, even though economic expansion is already happening.
Meanwhile, in the Caucasus, Russia benefits from strengthening its borders against a Georgia wanting to join both the EU and NATO.
2. China's imperative is to keep both Xinjiang and Tibet under their control. Xinjiang borders eight countries and Tibet borders India, meaning both act as buffers to the Chinese heartland, home of the Han. China's more recent projecting itself into the South China Sea is all about securing supply lines for their resources and finished products.
3. The US chapter is more like a short history on the country. The US' purchase of the French colonies, the pushback of the Spanish and the wars with Mexico meant the creation of a homogenous, easy to defend, vast country, where Cuba is the natural outsider that needs to be kept in check as it sits off the Gulf of Mexico. Trade that leaves the Mississippi having to pass within shooting distance of the island.
4. Another recent history lesson, this one on Western Europe. The author mentions the U.K.'s privileged position of geographic security and, with the ability to shut down the sea passage between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K., the need for the U.K. To keep Scotland in the union. Additionally, France also has an excellent geospatial position within Europe, though being overshadowed, economically, by Germany, which in turn might have to look to Russia for support, if circumstances change, as, for Germany, Russia is only a Central European plane away.
Southern European countries, due to weather conditions, tougher coastlines and other geological issues, are more likely junior partners in the European experiment that is the EU.
5. Africa is big and disconnected, both internally and externally. Interesting factoid: The words ‘sahel' and ‘swahili' have the same etymological source, the Arabic for ‘coast'.
6. An excellent overview and analysis of recent events in the Middle East. Israel needs strategic control of the areas that still define Palestine; Iran is getting a lot of international credit because it controls the strait of Hormuz; And, of course, a lot of the current conflict is the result of arbitrary borders drawn in the wake of the First World War.
7. India and Pakistan both want to influence Afghan politics. Pakistan needs a friendly neighbor to the west, as it needs a fallback in case India rolls in from the east and, conversely, India wants to then control Pakistan's western neighbor.
China is developing a port on Pakistan's coast, the same the Soviet Union was likely aiming for when it went into Afghanistan in 1979, planning on a corridor that links this warm water port, one without the limitations of outside control which China currently has to deal with in the straight of Malacca, through the length of Pakistan, to China's Turkish province of Xinjiang, another reason why China can't give up that province, though some are fighting for independence, there.
Meanwhile, China needs to control Tibet, lest India would, India hosting the Dalai Lama as a kind of insurance policy, China supporting Maoists in Nepal as a consequence, agitating India.
8. Japan prefers control over Korea as it is a natural staging ground for controlling Japan. Additionally, as Japan has virtually no natural resources, it historically has tried to find these on the Asian mainland, starting multiple wars, before pivoting into a trading power.
9. Brazil is positioned to be the strongest power in Latin America, but, due to large parts of its lands being too isolated and lacking major ports and navigable rivers, only to a limited extent, that is, the country is not in a position to challenge the USA.
10. Russia is the most involved in securing access to the arctic, with particularly the US lagging behind.
Haunting, surreal, bleak. Beautiful.
Written in 1977 by this Hungarian author, my copy dated from 1987 and has an introduction by the Latin American writer Carlos Fuentes. Fuentes saw parallels between Konrad's description of, and accusation against, the provincial town in The City Builder and cities in Latin America, in the 1980s, them slowly emerging from autocratic rule.
I see parallels with our modern, more and more stratified society.
I suppose this makes Konrad's book as relevant as ever, which must be because of his complex, but insightful prose, sentence after sentence precisely describing the state of being of modern city dwellers, alienated from each other and their surroundings.
My only complaint is that, at times, he seems to try too hard to be insightful through complex prose. Or I'm not smart enough.
Just short of a handful of essays on the Obama government's misrepresentation of reality, surrounding both the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the war in Syria.
Hersh' story on the assassination of Bin Laden was a scoop. His revelations surrounding the Syrian war have, in parts, been reported elsewhere. However, his very straightforward documentation brings unprecedented clarity.
In short, though much is now quite well known, ‘moderate' rebels quickly were sidetracked in Syria, leaving only fundamentalists. However, as the US very much wanted to remove Assad from power, the US, through Turkey, and post-Ghadaffi Libya, ended up providing weapons and supplies to the fundamentalists they themselves were also fighting in Iraq.
Excellent reporting. But, a bit of a short book.
Excellent, if sometimes overly wordy, account of the modern history of the Congo.
The book is meticulously researched, the many interviews with individuals that actually played a role during and even way before independence, are probably the most fascinating aspect. But, the writing is too wordy, sometimes reading more like a blog than a treatise on Congolese history, which make the book unnecessarily difficult to plow through, the 600 pages not making it any easier.
Van Reybrouck points out that Leopold II was certainly in part in it for personal gain, but at least as much to obtain fortune and status for Belgium and Belgians alike.
Also mentioned is George Grenfell, after Livingstone and Stanley the third major Congo explorer.
It took a while before the Congo became a financially viable proposition for Leopold. The first stage was the creation of the railway line between the coast and Kinshasa. The river, after Kinshasa, can not be navigated after Kinshasa and, before, goods had to be transported by land, taking some two weeks to arrive at the coast.
Halfway through the construction of the railway, the Belgians moved to an incentive based model, financially promising increased returns to the native workers when outperforming targets. Hugely successful, the rest of the country was not yet introduced to an economy simply based on money.
Yet, Leopold needed to somehow tax the population. That ended being done in rubber. And, the forceful collection of rubber, and it's many excesses, directly lead to the personal protectorate being taken away from Leopold and being put under the administration of Belgium.
What's not clear to me, and what is not addressed here, nor in any piece I could find online, is whether Brazilian rubber has no connection to Congolese, or rather, African rubber. Specifically, rubber in Southeast Asia was grown after a Brit somewhat clandestinely exported rubber seeds from Brazil. Could he also not simply have taken the seeds from Africa?
When Belgium took over from Leopold, the initial intention was to manage the country in a more objective, scientific, method. But, after the discovery of a wide variety of geological resources, particularly in the south, in Katanga, it was not atypical for the Congolese to claim that life under Leopold was better than under his son Albert.
William lever, founder of Unilever, obtained the right to exploit an area larger than twice the size of Belgium, after the Brits gave him a less favorable deal for obtaining palm oil, which he required for the manufacturing of his sunlight soap.
Fascinating, it was Congolese troops under Belgian commands who pushed the Italians out of Ethiopia in 1941, allowing for the return of Heile Selassie. In the process, the Belgians clocked their largest military victory ever, in the garrison town of Saio.
Perhaps even more impressive, in 1943, Congolese troops left Lagos to travel to Egypt, overland, through the Sahara, to reinforce allied troops and block Rommel's access to the Suez from his base in Libya.
But wait, there's more. A Belgian Congolese contingent of doctors actually supported the war in Myanmar.
And then, the Hiroshima bomb contained Congolese uranium, squirreled away in a lot of 1250 ton, by the manager of the Congolese uranium mine, when the Germans wee threatening to overtake the Congo. In he end, Belgium received 2.5 billion usd and got access to nuclear technology, which resulted in nuclear power plants in both Belgium and the Congo.
Van Reybrouck completely kills the Lumumba myth, showing that his status as a communists' saint is due to his violent death, not his political or intellectual achievements.
Fascinating how Mobutu's tenure had similarities with other dictators and dictatorships.
He overthrew his government twice, in similar vein like J.J. Rawlings in Ghana. His kleptocracy and control is almost identical to that of Dos Santos in Angola. The author makes a point of mentioning the death trips, by chopper, dropping prisoners out of the back, high above the forest, identical to Pinochet's tactics in Chile, though, there, political prisoners were dropped above he ocean.
On Africa's Great War, the war that originally was triggered to remove Kabila from power, run by the same forces, Uganda and Rwanda, that had put him there in the first place, replacing Mobutu, and which escalated in a free for all, individual factions fighting each other for control of natural resources in the eastern Congo, the author cuts quite a few corners. Several good books have been written about this period, suggesting that the author would have done better to be even more succinct. But, he does add a good observation: failed nation states are the success stories of a global neoliberalism gone crazy.
This is no frivolous account of a journey along the Silk Road. Introspective, in depth, almost scholarly. I had to read slowly to fully grasp the whole text. A joy. The author traveled from beyond Xian, in the heart of China and once the imperial capital, also the home of the terra-cotta warriors, to the Mediterranean at Antioch, now Antalya.
Not only is Thubron's journey epic, his retelling is fantastic. His prose is gorgeous, his sentiment melancholic. Interspersed with in-depth histories of peoples, heroes and geographies, this is perhaps the most impressive travel story I've ever read. But... He flies from Maimana, in northwestern Afghanistan, to Herat. Who has recently traveled the Silk Road without chickening out somewhere?
Thubron easily gives Theroux a run for his money.
At last, clarity as to why typical central Asian shoes have upturned noses: to reduce friction in the sand!
"I'm afraid of, on my travels, nothing happening, experiencing nothing. Emptiness. Of only hearing myself."
I've been wanting to read anything by Battuta for ages. Battuta, living in the 14th century, is best known as a traveler and explorer, who, in a period of some 30 years, covered around 117,000 km. He visited most of the Islamic world as well as a series of other countries, including parts of North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia,Southeast Asia and China in the East. A distance surpassing that of his predecessor and near-contemporary Marco Polo. If Battuta would be making his journey today, he'd be visiting around 44 countries. Indeed, it's surprising that 30 years of travel can be captured in a mere 240 pages. And that's including notes by the translator.
I stumbled upon this book in a bookstore called Get Lost in San Francisco. Little did I know that a comparable copy is available online. However, the book is not very good. This publication has left the early 19th century translation, by a Rev. Samuel Lee, intact, complete with printing errors and an errata page. With the sometimes archaic English and the changes in spelling and pronunciation of names, this is not the most convenient.
Also, Battuta's style is far from engaging. Mostly losing himself in descriptions of the holy men of the cities he visits, he's a very bad travel writer. Only towards the second half of the book does he become a bit more descriptive of his experiences.
The book, obviously, is extremely suitable to turn into some online interactive map-based experience. And, of course, this has already been done.
What I don't really get is that this guy traveled for almost 30 years. Where did he get the funds and, perhaps more interestingly, how did he constantly manage to get all sorts of riches from the kings and princes he visited on his journeys. I'd be very interested to learn that trick.
Quite the character, Page was to some extent the inspiration for the character portrayed by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. A war photographer, specifically active during the Vietnam war, he underwent neurosurgery in the US after a near-fatal encounter. Afterwards, working as caregivers for amputees and traumatized returnees, he worked with Ron Kovic, who's story became the movie Born on the Fourth of July. Derailed is something of a memoir, released in 1995, but written mostly a few years before, detailing Page's return to Vietnam and Cambodia, as a photographer. For me, having visited Vietnam the year prior to reading the book, the country Page encountered only 20 years ago is as different as to how I saw it as it was from when he left it during the Vietnam war. As a result, the book has relevance primarily as a memoir or, if you will, a sign of the times. Page, known for his extensive drug use, too regularly makes a point of his smoking habits, which gets old quickly. Interestingly, he doesn't drink.
A large part of the book is about Page's times with Sean Flynn, the son of Erol Flynn, who went MIA in Cambodia (and who was immortalized in a The Clash song). Later, when returning, Page spent quite some time tracking down what happened to his friend.
Two years after this book was released, he released Requiem, containing photographs by journalists killed in south east Asia during the many wars there. From this, a permanent photographic exhibition followed at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh, which I went to see last year.
The title of the book refers to a comment, near the end, where Pisani states that she feels that, in the AIDS industry, "we are all whores". The book's an interesting introduction to 'the business of AIDS', which Pisani on occasions refers to as 'AIDS mafia', though she's also deploying a certain level of hypocrisy. Particularly in relation to her first years at UNAIDS, Pisani tries to show the enthusiasm as well as the amateurishness of those working for the organization, meanwhile seemingly trying to cover up that, though she's now talking about it, she was in no way more professional than everyone else. In fact, the general story of her rise and rise could be construed as an example of opportunism in the face of millions of dollars of funding.
Most of the book is an interesting series of anecdotes, where Pisani occasionally wags the finger at her colleagues and herself and, with it being accessibly written, reads away easily. This makes the book both entertaining and readable but also not much more than something like "my years with the AIDS mafia", the only real value being the very last chapter of the book, where the author recounts her list of solutions for stopping the spread of HIV:
+ Persuade uninfected people to use condoms with partners who are likely to be infected. In East and Southern Africa and most gay communities, that's every new sex partner, in most other places, that would focus on sex workers. Promote lubricants for anal sex. + Provide methadone and clean needles to reduce the risk of injecting drugs. + Reduce the viral load in infected individuals. Keep a mother's viral load down around childbirth. + Circumcise men. Screen for and treat sexually transmitted diseases in sex workers, their clients and their partners.
In essence, the book is a compendium of salt-related trivia against a backdrop of world history. This is not as weird as it sounds, as salt is an essential commodity and has often been under strict state control, from China to ancient Rome.
A few interesting bits:
+ The ancient Romans sometimes payed their soldiers in salt, the source of the word 'salary'. + The Frenchified version of 'salary', 'solde', is the source for the word 'soldier'. + 'Hal' is a word for 'salt'. Presumably Germanic or Keltic, but the author does not disclose that information. That means that cities like Halle, Hallstad and quite a few others (in Europe) were named after their major souce of income. + The word for the French used by the Romans, 'Gaul', also hails from the same linguistic source. + 'Salad' comes from the Romans putting salt on their veggies. + Kurlansky (when writing the book in 2002) draws parallels between the European Celts and the Tarim mummies of Uighur China. Something in which he seems to have been proven right.
Superbly readable biography of a Galician Jew who converted to Islam, was born in 1900 and covering the first 32 years of his life.
His description of his life in Central Europe in the early 1920s is surprisingly recognizable for its moral decay and his clear fascination and adoption of Islam is both well explained and credible. And even though his love for Islam is occasionally seen through too rosy tinted glasses, he is also not completely without critique.
Excellent piece of research on how the relaxation of standards for accepting individuals into the American army, in order to meet the recruitment goals needed to facilitate the war on terror, has significantly impacted the quality of the army.
Before reading, I was under the impression that the book was going to uncover some nefarious conspiracy. Instead, it shows how negligence, carelessness, stubbornness and ignorance were the drivers for these changes for the worse.
Awfully entertaining. Though laden with mystery on several levels, this creation is a clear nod to, amongst many, Sophie Calle's [b:The Address Book 15865864 The Address Book Sophie Calle https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355095287s/15865864.jpg 21615904]: It's like you, the reader, found a library book used by two students to communicate with each other, writing in the margins, trying to uncover the real identity of the author of the 50 year old book, while being chased around by mysterious forces.In the end, both the ‘original' book, as well as the story in the margins, are love stories, which came as a bit of surprise, if welcome.J.J. Abrams, who conceptualised the work, in interviews mentioned that he started thinking about the work after he found what seems to have been a Bookcrossing book. Doug Durst, the writer of the ‘original' book mentions the fascinating tale of [a:B. Traven 32530 B. Traven https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1300746377p2/32530.jpg] as inspiration. Art imitating life indeed.I have two (smallish) gripes about the work. The book is supposed to be some 60 years old and comes with a lot of inserts, notes, letters, postcards, photos, that are left in the book by the two students. The paper of all these things feels wrong, which takes away from the implied authenticity.Second, the two students read and reread the book many times, constantly having a back and forth between the two of them. However, roughly, their narrative progresses as you move through the book from front to back. If this were real, the students' narrative would be all over the place, not follow the outline of the book so neatly.
De Oliveira presents a thoroughly researched overview of one of the more obfuscated African nations, providing many excellent insights. But, his writing style is convoluted, while too often he doesn't elaborate on the many small remarks he puts in as matters of course while describing a larger narrative. Mostly, these are issues an editor should have taken care of, and take away from the accessibility of the book.
Oliveira makes the point that post colonial Angola is the only African country where the Creole, the power brokers between the colonial masters and the colonial subjects, eventually became the elite. Also because there was a colonial elite to begin with, the Portuguese themselves being handsoff with the administration of their dominions, whether in Angola, Mozambique or Brazil.
But, perhaps more importantly, specifically for the post-independent resurgence of nationalism, driven by the descendants of these Creoles, with the scramble for Africa in the late 1800s bringing in much more Portuguese than just the criminals that were sent to this formal penal colony, they suffered a relative setback in late colonial times, having to compete for civil service jobs with literate, and white, Portuguese subjects, thus creating an early breeding ground for wanting to return to their former greatness.
Urbanized Angolans, covetting their Portuguese connections, contrasted themselves with the ‘savage' Africans from the hinterlands, which was emphasized by the most remote parts of Angola not even being formally integrated into a more centralized system until as late as the 1950s, education in these regions typically being taken care of by American and European missionary posts.
So, it was eventually the elites from very different parts of the country and thus with very different backgrounds, who first pitted themselves against the Portuguese and then against each other, each having very different ideas about their own position in the world, while not considering Angola as anything but a contingent piece of land.
Shortly after Portugal's retreat, two of the three movements remained, propped up by Cuba and South Africa, and the two countries themselves eventually faced off, in Angola, in 1988.
Peace agreements were signed in 1991, followed by elections in 1992. UNITA, operating from the countryside, expected an easy win. But, after high level defections, the tables turned, UNITA lost to the MPLA operating from Luanda, the capital, taking up their guns again, and reigniting a civil war that lasted ten more years and only ended with the death of UNITA leader Savimbi.
Angola was left with a president who tightly controlled his sphere of influence, focussed on exploitation of oil and diamonds, facilitated by Western companies, while having access to a very tight security apparatus, but unable to provide basic services in a country where agriculture had all but ceased to exist.
With UNITA out of the way, the MPLA dictated what it meant to be Angolan; a product of a Portuguese colonial history with no meaningful precolonial antecedent. With the capital at its center, Angola had become the republic of Luanda.
Already during the war that followed independence, the state aparatus which the MPLA controlled, was backed, or rather, undermined, by the president's setting up of a parallel system with the sole purpose of managing and controlling oil production. Technocratic, but also corrupt, the system remained in place after independence and is what effectively defines the state.
The Portuguese, before independence, for a bit over a decade, oversaw a period of huge growth, the country hosting the second largest contingent of foreigners after South Africa, but in 1976, all this had broken down, most foreigners having left after the start of civil war.
Fascinating, of course, that an exceedingly communist regime tolerated, even supported, the success of an exceedingly capitalist oil industry. While the MPLA was backed by the Soviets and the Cubans and the oppositions by the Americans and the South Africans, Angolan oil was managed by the French and Americans and shipped to the rest of the world via South Africa.
But after the country exchanged socialism for crony capitalism, SONANGOL, the state's oil company, went from strength to strength, at the turn of the century employing 9000 people in the second largest company in Africa.
All as the president's private vehicle for control.
After the war ended in 2002, the need for money in rebuilding the country and placating the former opposition grew significantly. With oil prices not yet having risen steeply, Angola was short on cash, but the many conditions set by Western institutions for providing funds were balked at and nothing happened, until China became willing to invest without conditions in 2005.
As a result, though not as efficient or cost effective, the state has been responsible for a wide array of infrastructural development projects, many with reasonably positive long term benefits, though many also with no clear long term plan or reasonable budgets, larger amounts available for spending also meaning more money being absorbed, appropriated, by those involved.
Not surprisingly, white elephants, large but pointless infrastructural projects, are plenty.
The poor are not included in the process of urban renewal and though lots of foreign expertise is flown in, the state dictates the nature of change, with the elite directly benefiting from the individual projects through ‘partnerships' and kickbacks.
Perhaps surprisingly, there is virtually no desire to manage skills transfers to replace the expensive expat crowd. On the other hand, this is fairly typical for other oil-rich states as well.
Not surprisingly, with the state having ample income, development organizations have little leverage to set the agenda and, since the war, have been marginalised. Meanwhile, the state pays lip service to the language of development politics, without actually implementing meaningful political change.
What makes the post colonial, post civil war, politics of Angola unique is that, with the help of huge amounts of oil money, the state, that is mostly the president, managed to reinvent itself several times, while also being able to create some meaningful change, if disproportionally small in relation to the money spent, for the vast majority of the population. Yet, these reinventions has as their sole objective the entrenchment of the ruling class, even if the core of this success, driven by the national oil company, was and is the responsibility of a small group of competent professionals.
With the president at the center, the elite have traded power for money.
In business, Angolan incompetents partnering with foreign companies or foreign managers, get rich on the spoils. Though often beneficial for the foreign players, long term risks are huge, with no legal recourse available, sometimes the outcome being death or being expelled from the country.
And, typical for elsewhere in Africa as well, investment horizons are short, months, not years.
So, as a result, commercial agriculture and manufacturing, processes that take years to come to fruition, are avoided, virtually everything being imported from abroad.
More recently, Angolan business has moved abroad, with the most popular objective being Portugal, where towards ten percent of the country stock exchange is in the hands of the Angolan elite.
The author never says it, but Angola is a truly fascist state, and trying to become more so; everything is of the state and of the state. But, the MPLA's fascist tendencies have resulted in an inclusive, if unequal society where, for now, civil war based on ethnic differences is unthinkable. But, the political situation is ever more precarious, lacking the economic inclusion so desired by the masses.
At worst, new age clap-trap. At best, a mildly agreeable travel story. Also strongly reminded me of [b:The Celestine Prophecy 13103 The Celestine Prophecy (Celestine Prophecy, #1) James Redfield https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1341360412s/13103.jpg 2603195].The best part, in my 20th anniversary edition, was the addendum by Coelho on, basically, how to travel like a Situationist.
Naipaul loses the plot a bit towards the end of the book, specifically in relation to the lead character's relationship and because Naipaul seems to want to wrap up the book without taking his time, the largest part of the book feels like it's describing present day (central African, perhaps,) society. Set, roughly, during a ten year period, starting in the early 1960, in a country strongly resembling the DRC, this book is a perfect companion to [b:Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa 10046142 Dancing in the Glory of Monsters The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa Jason Stearns https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328757755s/10046142.jpg 14942026], set a full 40 years later, feeling as relevant in understanding the present day situation.
Like an extensively stringed together collection of anecdotes, the book is an interesting read. But, besides that it is now a decade old, it also feels like its grandstanding is not always congruent with reality, but more put together to impress fellow urbanists with Davis' rapid fire of examples.
I have first hand experience of many of the places the author mentions in his book with sweeping statements that appear to primarily try to impress the reader and end up feeling baffling. “In Luanda, Maputo, Kinshasa and Cochabamba, two thirds or more of the population earn less than the cost of their minimum required daily nutrition.” Sounds horrid, except that these people aren't dying in droves. And, why Cochabamba and not la Paz, El Alto or Oruro?
And, things change rapidly. The situations the author describes for Johannesburg, São Paulo, Bangkok and others have significantly changed in the last decade and a half. Or, whatever Gordon Brown said at some event in 2004 is completely irrelevant, now.
The author spends time on explaining pirate urbanization, classifying it as privatization of squatting. Not examples being squatting on the commercially unviable periphery, like extremely steep hillsides, or the shores of waste dumps, but the selling, reselling, and redivision of commercially viable land in unzoned mini plots with little or no amenities.
Interestingly, the author marks the British as the greatest, if unintentional, builders of slums, of all time.
By enforcing laws, both in their African and South Asian colonies, that prevented the migration of indigenous peoples to the city, they facilitated the creation of vast slums on the edges of these same cities, for which the colonial overlords refused to provide any services. After independence, these policies were never properly, or extremely slowly, reversed. “Despite rhetorics of national liberation and social justice, [the post-colonial governments] have aggressively adopted the racial zoning of the colonial period to defend their own class privileges and spatial exclusivity.”
And, the author goes further, stating that urban redevelopment still strives to maximize private profit and social control, a distant echo of Haussmann in 1860s Paris.
Over-urbanization is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs.
The author dedicates a section to the string of failures led by the World Bank, the IMF, as well as, in conjunction, third world governments. Structurally, schemes thought up by the World Bank to house the urban poor, primarily squatters, saw middle and upper middle classes benefit. Either directly or, after reselling of the plots assigned to redevelopment, indirectly.
In addition, the interesting point is made that NGOs, in relation to the urban development of slums, typically take up the position of political middlemen and deradicalize and bureaucratize urban development movements, in addition to creating its own form of clientelism.
In relation to this, the author minces up de Soto's vision of enabling the poor through titling their possessions in slums, for the simple reason that the vast majority of slum dwellers are renters, not owners.
Much of the book is a roller coaster ride, from country to country, from developing city to the next, from one set of wide ranging issues related to urbanization, slum dwellers or gentrification, to the next.
But, this gets tiring. The book aims to be something of a ‘state of the slum nation', but he author implies some kind of grand scheme of gentrification, of marginalizing the poor. Yet, it feels much more likely that what's at work is just human nature, with those with money calling the shots. That's terrible, unless you're the one calling he shots.
