The questions of urbanization and the growth of megacities have raised the significant attention of many people recently. Today, it is already a well-known fact that more than half of the world’s population lives in cities with a predicted 90% that will be living in 2030. The trend towards globalization and city life now affects many developing countries.
However, even though this switch is beneficial for many people it also includes many issues, such as the rising number of slums, poverty, child labor, and criminality. This paper aims to explore urbanization and its consequences while analyzing two specific works pertained to the question of urbanization, urban poverty, and immigration.
The first work by Mike Davis is called Planet of Slums. It is a survey of the effects of urbanization on global poverty. According to the author, the growing number of cities today impacts the rising urban poverty in a form of slums. The are several reasons for that, such as “the neoliberal globalization since 1978”, the wrong actions of the World Bank and IMF, and “middle-class hegemony” (23). Davis also states that the cities “have become a dumping ground for a surplus population working in unskilled, unprotected and low-wage informal service industries and trade” (23). He insists that among the results of urbanization will be “rising inequality within and between cities of different sizes and specialization” (Davis 8).
In my opinion, Davis makes a furious analysis on the topic of urbanization and the rise of urban poverty. Perhaps, this strong statement can be explained by his Marxist’s critical views on the neoliberal ideology. The author looks at the core of urbanization while not being distracted by the complex urban processes and terms. He depicts that the gap between social and economic values of rich and poor continues to shrink over time. Davis states that are approximately 200.000 slums in the world and this number will significantly increase in the future. He sees slums as the world’s future, the cities that will be made not “out of glass and steel”, but rather “out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks and scrap wood” (19).
The second work is the foreigner as Citizen from the book Democracy and the Foreigner by Bonnie Honig. The author focuses on the American immigrant myth and tries to depict major characteristics of the debate about immigration, citizenship, and the national identity of American society. According to her, the foreigner in America is “a supplement to the nation, an agent of national enchantment that might rescue the regime from corruption and return it to its first principles” (74). Among those principles are “capitalist, communal, familial, or liberal” (74). Thus, she does not ask a question about what problems immigrants might bring to the country but rather examines what issues they can solve.
Therefore, the author describes the term ‘foreignness’ as one of the most crucial and debatable topics of today’s world. Her work is important since it provides different perspectives on questions of immigration, nationality, and their inherent values. She understands the myth of American immigration and tries to examine it through the prism of democratic legitimation and national rejuvenation.
Overall, these two works show different perspectives on the concept of globalization, urbanization, and immigration. While the first work critically acclaims today’s neoliberal paradigm and asserts that the cities of the future will be slums, the second work states that foreigners can be beneficial for the society by saving it from corruption and increasing its capitalistic value.
Works Cited
Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. London: New Left Review, 2004. Print.
Honig, Bonnie. Democracy and the Foreigner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Print.