Planet of Slums MIKE DAVIS
Freer trade, deregulation and information technology are without doubt responsible for the heralded rise of a global middle class, mostly in Asia. But there is also a parallel reality — the “surplus population” of the poor who have been pushed from the land only to find work intermittently, if at all, in the informal urban economy. These billion dispossessed people inhabit what Mike Davis calls “the planet of slums” on the periphery of the world’s great megacities. In this conversation with NPQ editor Nathan Gardels, Mike Davis explores the themes raised in his recent book on the postmodern poor.