Mike Davis on the future of the world's megacities
PLANET OF SLUMS
New Left Review 26, March-April 2004
Future history of the Third Worlds post-industrial megacities. A billion-strong global proletariat ejected from the formal economy, with Islam and Pentecostalism as songs of the dispossessed.
1 Comments:
Not sure if Bolivia is on the list of "future megacities of the world," but this article struck me as a perfect example of small, third world cities trying to come into the games of global competition and commerce. This NYtimes article discusses El Alto, a poverty stricken city in Bolivia which has a booming manufacturing complex. The US wants to open up the city for free trade, however, the residents of Bolivia and the city have differing views. Radical leftists feel that if El Alto opens up to free trade, investments from foreign enterprises will rob the city of its own resources and worsen the deeply entrenched poverty. However, government officials are eager to let El Alto and Bolivia enter the global arena because they feel it will open up more jobs and modernize the city. Under the Andean Pact, which was the former pact with the US and which created duty free exports to the US, expires in 2006. Bolivian officials noticed that manufacturing exports and production rose during the time of the pact. Thus, they believe that through free trade, jobs, production, and profits will increase.
here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/business/worldbusiness/09trade.html
By jgandhi, at 12:50 AM
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