Re: SC10

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/03/14/davis/index_np.html

A swiftly crumbling planet

In case global warming, avian influenza, AIDS, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Chinese nationalism, epidemic obesity and the state of the Knicks don't have you worried enough, Mike Davis has a new reason to panic: Planet Earth is turning into a giant slum. For the first time in human history, the world's urban population now equals its rural population, and the balance tilts further toward the cities with each passing year. The overwhelming majority of this growth is occurring in shantytowns and tenements stretching from Karachi, Pakistan, to Lima, Peru, where people live crowded together in densities that sometimes dwarf those of such notorious 19th century human anthills as New York's Mulberry Bend. As of 2005, a billion people were living in slums, and the number is rising by 25 million per year.................

But the slums that hold 39 percent of China's urban population, 55 percent of India's, and an incredible 99 percent of Ethiopia's (according to U.N. figures) make a mockery of Jacobs' "urban ballet." In Davis' words, "Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first-century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay."