9781844671601-frontcover

Planet of Slums

The celebrated urban historian’s bestselling account of the global explosion of slums.
According to the united nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, and even from economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly unforeseen development, and asks whether the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, are volcanoes waiting to erupt.

Paperback, 228 pages

ISBN: 9781844671601

September 2007

$19.95 / £9.99

Other Editions

Ebook

ISBN: 9781844674855

September 2007

$15.99

Hardback, 228 pages

ISBN: 9781844670222

March 2006

$24.00 / £15.99

Reviews

  • “The astonishing facts hit like anvil blows ... A heartbreaking book.”
  • “Davis's prose exudes a crusading fervour – if not exactly messianic, close enough.”
  • “If it's apocalypse you want—and frankly who doesn't, because how else to explain the mess we're in—nobody does it better.”
  • “The Raymond Chandler of urban geography ... a coruscating tragedy.”
  • “A profound enquiry into an urgent subject ... a brilliant book.”

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