Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

Author:Mike Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Verso Books

Off Worlds

In contrast to Second Empire Paris, contemporary Haussmannization often reclaims the center for ungrateful upper classes whose bags are already packed for the suburbs. If the poor bitterly resist eviction from the urban core, the well-heeled are voluntarily trading their old neighborhoods for fantasy-themed walled subdivisions on the periphery. Certainly the old gold coasts remain – like Zamalek in Cairo, Riviera in Abidjan, Victoria Island in Lagos, and so on – but the novel global trend since the early 1990s has been the explosive growth of exclusive, closed suburbs on the peripheries of Third World cities. Even (or especially) in China, the gated community has been called the “most significant development in recent urban planning and design.”68

These “off worlds” – to use the terminology of Blade Runner – are often imagineered as replica Southern Californias. Thus, “Beverly Hills” does not exist only in the 90210 zip code; it is also, with Utopia and Dreamland, a suburb of Cairo, an affluent private city “whose inhabitants can keep their distance from the sight and severity of poverty and the violence and political Islam which is seemingly permeating the localities.”69 Likewise, “Orange County” is a gated estate of sprawling million-dollar California-style homes, designed by a Newport Beach architect and with Martha Stewart décor, on the northern outskirts of Beijing. (As the suburb’s developer explained to an American reporter: “People in the United States may think of Orange County as a place, but in China, people feel Orange County is a brand name, something like Giorgio Armani.”70) Long Beach – which the New York Times designated as “the epicenter of faux L.A. in China” – is also north of Beijing, astride a new six-lane super-highway.71 Palm Springs, meanwhile, is a heavily guarded enclave in Hong Kong where affluent residents can “play tennis and stroll through the theme park, where Disney comic strip characters are surrounded by mock Greek columns and neo-classical pavilions.” Urban theorist Laura Ruggeri contrasts the expansive “imported” California lifestyles of residents in their large semi-detached homes with the living conditions of their Filipino maids, who sleep in chicken-coop-like sheds on the rooftops.72

Bangalore, of course, is famous for re-creating Palo Alto and Sunnyvale lifestyles, complete with Starbucks and multiplexes, in its southern suburbs. According to planner Solomon Benjamin, the wealthy expats (officially “non-resident Indians”) live as they might in California in “exclusive ‘farmhouse’ clusters and apartment blocks with their own swimming pools and health clubs, walled-in private security, 24-hour electrical power backup and exclusive club facilities.”73 Lippo Karawaci in the Tangerang district, west of Jakarta, doesn’t have an American name but is otherwise also a copy of a West Coast suburb, boasting a more or less self-sufficient infrastructure with hospital, shopping mall, cinemas, sport and golf club, restaurants and a university. It also contains internally gated areas known locally as “totally protected zones.”74

The quests for security and social insulation are obsessive and universal. In both central and suburban districts of Manila, wealthy homeowners’ associations barricade public streets and crusade for slum demolition.

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