University College Maastricht

Period 2 2011-2012 Course SSC3047

Course book

Development & Poverty in the 21st Century

University College Maastricht

Development & Poverty in the 21st Century Period 2

CONTENTS Preface Introduction Development and Poverty in the 21st Century Course Objectives Problem based Units and City file. Schedule Rules & Regulations Problem based study units Unit 1: Unit 2: Unit 3: Unit 4: Unit 5: Unit 6: Unit 7: Introduction Cities and Slums Emergence of Megacities and Slums Melting Pots or Boiling Pots? Precarious Labour Commodification of the Body Ecology of Urban Poverty Global Crises, Surplus Humanity or Urban Futures? 3 4 4 5 5 8 9 12 13 16 19 22 24 27 30

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Preface This 5th edition of the course book is a course manual with links to books, academic journal articles, and reports, usually available at the universitys library and study centres, effort has been made to provide easy access to various web-related sources. To stay informed we use ELEUM/BlackBoard as a general communication tool to provide the latest information on lectures, deadlines, literature and extra materials. For general literature, we strongly advise you to purchase a copy of Mike Davis (2006) Planet of Slums. London: Verso. (ISBN 1-84467-022-8), available at local bookshops (Studystore (Tongersestraat 12a); Tribune (Kapoenstraat 10)). For students not acquainted with the Maastricht problem-based learning system we advise consultation of PBL Study Skills; an overview by C. van Til & F. van der Heijden (ISBN 90-5398-057-1, to be ordered from Department of Educational Development and Research, tel 043-3885725, or e-mail: secretariaateduc@educ.unimaas.nl. In case of questions, problems or uncertainties, your tutor is your first contact; if required students can also contact the course co-ordinator by email, phone or at the plenary lectures. We wish you a stimulating and interesting course! Lou Snijders ( course coordinator UCM) lou.snijders@maastrichtuniversity.nl 043-3883095

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Introduction
The smiles of passers-by, acknowledging us with a grin or a wave, ran contrary to the hardship written like graffiti all over my new surroundings, where the cheapest metals and the throwaway things of the wealthy had been used with great care to create the best living conditions possible. This was a great camping ground away from the rural areas, set up in acknowledgement of the contradictory magnetism of the city. Gone were the valley forests and green rolling hilltops of the Xhosa ancestral lands in the Transkei; in their place was a mix of sea sand, soil and never-ending flatness Otter, 2007, Khayelitsha: uMlungu in a township, p. 255. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 per cent of urban humanity UNFPA, 2007. State of the World Population: unleashing the potential of urban growth, p. 1. The Altgeld Gardens public housing project sat at Chicagos southernmost edge: two thousand apartments arranged in a series of two-story brick buildings with army-green doors and mock shutters (). The stench, the toxins, the empty uninhabited landscape. For close to a century, the few square miles surrounding Altgeld had taken in the offal of scores of factories, the price people had paid for their high-wage jobs. Now that the jobs were gone, and those people that could had already left, it seemed only natural to use the land as a dump. A dump and a place to house poor blacks. Obama, 2008 Dreams from my Father, pp. 164-165.

Development and Poverty in the 21st Century As the first decade of the 21st century has come to an end, this course looks at the city as a lens through which to consider issues of development and poverty in our globalized world:
In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth. UNFPA, 2007, p. 1.

As the world is experiencing a series of interlocked crises the financial crisis, the food crisis, the population crisis, the climate crisis, the energy crisis this course aims to examine the way in which these crises illuminate and exacerbate the fault lines in the global economic and social infrastructure. Modern urban growth and development has been inexorably entwined with the globalization of economy and the agro-industrial industries. But who are the winners and the losers in these processes of global change? In some ways the city, as an urban space, can be conceptualized as a contested site, where various social actors pursue their agendas and enact their identities. Through readings in this course we delve into the human aspects of these loci, embodying contrasts and contradictions, and analyze social, economic and political processes in industrial and post-industrial cities. We discuss connections and tensions between urban communities and
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economic development, the creation of vulnerable populations through urbanization and the structural failures of slum ecologies. We examine the articulation of neoliberalism in urban space, and the consequences of international debt and structural adjustment projects in megacities and consider the relationship between the city and the environment, and the ways in which bodies are commodified in cities around the world. But we also examine the opportunities these cities represent: as spaces of creativity, new melanges of identity, new cultures and novel economic, social and political prospects. At the heart of the course is Mike Davis provocative book Planet of Slums a historical and economic study of the urbanization of poverty: statistically, the urban poor number over 2 billion people. Over 1 billion live in slum conditions. Davis book draws on UN reports and a large body of academic and policy literature comprising case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America. With the aid of this text we will discuss the historical, economic and ideological roots of urban poverty: from decolonization and civil wars to the rural-urban migration processes and the privatization of public works. Through Davis work and the articles by other scholars and policy-makers we study the consequences of urban poverty from a structural perspective: the impact of overcrowding and sanitation on public health, the impact of growing urban centres on global environmental sustainability but also cities of space, of social and economic possibility in the Global South. Course Objectives Students who have done this course have acquired knowledge about the impact of urbanization on the interrelationship of development and poverty in an increasingly globalized world, in particular: o What are the drivers in processes of urbanization and slum formation; o Why we are increasingly witnessing the emergence of megacities and what the consequences are in terms of urban planning; o What challenges and opportunities cities encounter in terms of multicultural identities, spaces and processes of transnationalism; o What ecological challenges and opportunities urban slums face; o Ways in which (urban) poverty impacts on the use of human bodies; o How processes of urbanization provide both major environmental challenges and opportunities; o How major global crises (financial, climate, migration) are interlocking and expressing themselves in the major urban centres; o How relations of globalization and (urban) poverty have been and can be conceptualized. Problem based Units and City file. Group sessions The course materials will be studied for all 7 units and subsequently discussed in 7 tutorials, furthermore students from all participating faculties attend the 7 lectures. For each unit cases have been developed with references to articles to be studied.
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Students will write a paper (city file) and give a presentation on one of the chapters of their file during one of the 2 tutorials on Friday in week 4 and 5, with a focus on a one of the three megacities from the list. All lectures will take 2 hours (13.30-15.30). Please be on time and sign the presence sheet. The lecturer will be shortly introduced after which the lecture will start, usually with a 15 min break midway. Students are encouraged to prepare questions for the lecturers and or discussion. Paper and presentation The city file consists of an analysis based on a problem/question related to themes of three Units. Each time, students critically connect the emergence of the megacity they are writing about to the structural issues of poverty, inequality, development and community organization/civil society initiatives as discussed throughout the course. Each subgroup thus works on similar learning goals for their city-file. During the course your subgroup will thus develop an academic analytical profile of the megacity of your choice. The city-file as a whole consists of three thematic, well-referenced, 1.200 word paragraphs/chapters chosen from 3 units, plus a 1.200 word introduction and conclusion that renders the file into a coherent whole. You may choose from the following cities, provided that there is an even distribution in the tutorial group as a whole: Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta or Johannesburg. Students are writing an academic file and are encouraged to use diverse sources including monographs, policy reports and academic articles. As this is a research assignment, students are expected to find their main sources utilizing the databases available through the Maastricht University library portal E-journals, the e-reader, Picarta database and the materials available in the library itself. Google scholar is also useful. Besides the reports and policy papers your final reference list should contain an absolute minimum of at least ten academic sources, including 5 references of units chosen. To get you started, here are some resources you will find useful: UM Library Catalogue; PiCarta: (NCC + OLC); Google Scholar; Gugler, J. (2004). World Cities Beyond the West: globalization, development and inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. o Megacities Project, http://www.megacitiesproject.org o The latest editions (as these may not yet appear in Google Scholar) of UM E-journals such as: International Migration European Journal of Migration and Law Forced Migration Review Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies The European Journal of Development Research Social & Cultural Geography Regional Studies o o o o
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Journal of Development Studies Urban Studies City & Society Third World Quarterly Cities

Of course, the journals, (edited) books and policy reports as well as the bibliographies of specific articles of the A-part reading lists too may be, or lead to, relevant resources. So may the websites of public/private organizations that are concerned with cities, such as UN-Habitat, UNFPA: UN-Habitat (2010). The State of African Cities. http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3034 UN-Habitat (2010). The State of Asian Cities. http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3078 Students are to work steadily on their city file from week one and produce a paper (city file), and give a presentation, the latter including a general introduction and one of the chapters of the paper. Group work will be scheduled during the first session, and then starts ultimately from Unit 2 onwards. During week 4 and 5 on the Friday tutorial each subgroup will give a 20 minute presentation of the results from their city. The other sub-groups comment on the basis of their own research findings on the same topics. Also, time will be allocated to exchange valuable observations and resources. The slides of the power point presentations are to be sent to all group members and the tutor on the day before the presentation, in order to ensure that all group members can prepare their feedback. The presentation makes up 10% of the final grade it is therefore important that each individual group member takes up a clear role in the presentation. After the last presentation, you have time to edit, and write an introduction and conclusion that renders the file into a coherent document before handed in. Each subgroup uploads its final city-file on Eleum through Safe Assignment. The city-files will be graded on a sub group basis and they make up 40% of the final grade. The take-home exam makes up for the other 50% of your final grade. See below for dates, activities and deadlines.

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Schedule Tue Oct 30 Tue Nov 6 Tue Nov 13 Tue Nov 20 Fri Nov 23 Tue Nov 27 Fri Nov 30 Tue Dec 4 Lecture Tutorial Lecture Tutorial Lecture Tutorial Lecture Tutorial Tutorial Lecture Tutorial Tutorial plenary Intro, U1 post discussion and U2 pre discussion U2 post; U3 pre U3 post; U4 pre U4 post; U5 pre Presentations (by 3 subgroups) U5 post; U6 pre Presentations (by 3 subgroups)

Lecture Tutorial U6 post; U7 pre. Upload your city file before 23:59 hrs. Lecture Tutorial U7 post; evaluation Handout take-home exam Upload take-home exam before 11:59 hrs.

Tue Dec 11

Mon Dec 17

See also the roadmap, published under ELEUM.

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Development & Poverty in the 21st Century Period 2

Rules & Regulations Educational setting Students gather each week on Tuesday for a group session (tutorial) of 2hrs and for a plenary session/lecture. The lectures aim to connect the study units, to give background and answer questions that came up in the study groups; In the group sessions students discuss the literature according to problem-based educational rules. During Friday group sessions in week 4 and 5 students present part of their city file to their group members, after which they finalise their city file. Students are required to bring the literature to class, to facilitate in-depth discussions, including a copy of: Mike Davis (2006) Planet of Slums. Attendance & Participation We expect students to be present at all meetings (plenary and group sessions) If not present at least 85% of the 16 sessions (i.e. 13 sessions) students will have to do an (extra) assignment before receiving a final grade. 12 sessions present: 1 assignment (at the co-ordinators discretion after consultation with the tutor) on missed gatherings. 11 or less of 16 sessions present: course has to be retaken. Regular workings of the lectures The lectures will take place on Tuesdays in the Turnzaal, main building of the faculty of Arts and Social Science, Hof van Tilly, Grote Gracht 90-92, and will last 2 hours (13.30-15.30). Please be on time! A lecturer will be shortly introduced, after which the lecture will start, usually with a 15 min break midway. Students are encouraged to prepare questions for the lecturers and for discussion. Assignments In order to permit students to undertake their own research and to relieve some of the pressure from the final exam, students collectively work on a file of a mega-city of their choice, consisting of city-specific analyses of three of the five the courses themes ( emergence, cultural diversity, labour, ecology, commodification of the body, ). Each chapter is some 1200 words long and well-referenced. The introduction and conclusion add 1200 words each the entire city-file is thus 6000 words TNR 12 (+/- 10%). The presentation will last 20 minutes max and the PowerPoint slides will be sent to the tutor and all other students in the group the day before the presentation, in order to ensure that all have opportunity to provide relevant feedback during the discussion(15 minutes max), after which the paper can be finalised, to be submitted before the deadline. Please bring the presentation on USB. These assignments can be considered a mid-term exam.
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Exam Take-home exam; The exam is based on the course book, the texts mentioned under the heading literature, as well as the lectures; All students must write in English Deadlines: see below.

How to pass this course? Presence at least 85%; Participation satisfactory (to the tutors discretion); 1 presentation (10% weight in the final mark); 1 City File (40% weight in final mark); Take-home exam (50% weight in final mark). Overall mark 5.5 is a pass. ECTS 5.

Deadlines The deadline for the individual City-Files is Tuesday December 4 at 23.59. Cityfiles must be handed in through safe assignment. The take-home exam will be distributed, and made available through Eleum, on Tuesday December 11 after the last session. The take-home exam must be handed in through safe assignment. The deadline for the take-home exam is Monday December 17 at 11.59 am (noon). The resit will take place in the last week of January, 2012, according to the UCM schedule.

Literature Books and articles (paper versions!) used are available at the Bonnefanten Library (study room, E-reader and regular library). Nearly all readings are also available on the internet (e-journals, the web and possibly a few resources on eleum). Students are advised to use the digital version of the course book available on eleum where internet sources are clickable. Students are required to bring the literature to class, to facilitate in-depth discussions, including a copy of: Mike Davis (2006) Planet of Slums. London: Verso. (ISBN 1-84467-022-8. It is also available in the universitys study rooms and library, especially at the study room cultural sciences/economics.

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Internet Announcements will be made through the Eleum/Blackboard interface at http://eleum.unimaas.nl. All papers (format= .doc) in this course have to be delivered through Safe Assignment in Eleum Every group will have its own group list in Eleum in order to easily exchange mail, power point presentations and other materials. Please visit Eleum regularly and use its extra resources and tools!

Plagiarism To avoid plagiarism and write their papers in the correct format students are strongly advised to read the document Stylesheet06 available in the course material section on Eleum. Plagiarism will be officially reported to the UCM examination committee. Regular sanctions of UCM apply. Poverty & Development, Course Coordination Team September 2012.

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PROBLEM BASED STUDY UNITS

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UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION CITIES AND SLUMS Urbanization of Poverty

Almost 1 billion people, or 32 per cent of the worlds urban population, live in slums, the majority of them in the developing world. Moreover, the locus of global poverty is moving to the cities, a process now recognized as the urbanization of poverty. Without concerted action on the part of municipal authorities, national governments, civil society actors and the international community, the number of slum dwellers is likely to increase in most developing countries. And if no serious action is taken, the number of slum dwellers worldwide is projected to rise over the next 30 years to about 2 billion. UN-Habitat report (2003) p. 1

The Urban Divide

Over the past 10 years, the proportion of the urban population living in slums in the developing world has declined from 39 per cent in the year 2000 to an estimated 32 per cent in 2010. And yet the urban divide endures, because in absolute terms the number of slum dwellers have actually grown considerably, and will continue to rise in the near future. Between the year 2000 and 2010, the urban population in the developing world increased by an estimaged average of 58 million per annum; this includes 6 million who were not able to improve their conditions and joined the ranks of slum dwellers. At the same time, UN-HABITAT estimates that through upgrading or prevention of informal settlements, developing countries lifted an annual 22 million people out of slum conditions between the year 2000 and 2010. Based on these trends, the worlds slum population is expected to reach 889 million by 2020. UN-Habitat report 2010, p. xii

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Staggering urban growth

cities will account for virtually all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 10 billion in 2050. Ninety-five percent of this final buildout of humanity will occur in the urban areas of developing countries, whose populations will double to nearly 4 billion over the next generation. Indeed, the combined urban population of China, India, and Brazil already roughly equals that of Europe and North AmericaDhaka, Kinshasa, and Lagos today are each approximately forty times larger than they were in 1950. Chinaurbanizing at a speed unprecedented in human historyadded more city-dwellers in the 1980s than did all of Europe (including Russia) in the entire nineteenth century. Davis (2006), p.2

Slums
the cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay. Davis (2006), p. 19

Core and periphery

In the sprawling cities of the Third World, then, periphery is a highly relative, time-specific term: todays urban edge, abutting fields, forest, or desert may tomorrow become part of a dense metropolitan core. Davis (2006), p. 37

Megaslums
There are probably more than 200,000 slums on earth, ranging in population from a few hundred to more than a million people. The five great metropolises of South Asia (Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Dhaka) alone contain about 15,000 distinct slum communities whose total population exceeds 20 million. Megaslums arise when shantytowns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery. Davis (2006), p. 26

Considering fertility?
Given the greater importance of natural increase and the failure of anti-migration policies, it seems obvious that fertility decline is much more likely than migration controls to reduce the rate of urban growth. Since high fertility in rural areas often underlies rural-urban migration, lower fertility in both rural and urban areas can decelerate urban growth. UNFPA (2007), p. 13.

Literature Course Book Davis (2006) Planet of Slums. London: Verso. (50 pp.) Chapter 1 The Urban Climacteric pp. 1-19 Chapter 2 The Prevalence of Slums pp. 20-49
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Readings UN-Habitat (2003). The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003. Chapter 1 Development Context & Millennium Development Goals: Understanding Slums, pp. 8-16 Chapter 2 Urbanization Trends and Forces Shaping Slums, pp. 17-31 Online available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=1156 UN-Habitat (2010), The State of the Worlds Cities 2010-2011. Chapter 1.1 Cross-Currents in Global Urbanization, pp. 4-17 Chapter 1.3 Slum Dwellers, pp. 30-49 Chaper 2.3 The Spatial Divide, pp. 82-89 Online available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=2917 UNFPA (2007). State of the World Population: unleashing the potential of urban growth. New York: UNFPA. Introduction. Peering into the Dawn of an Urban Millennium, pp. 1-4. Chapter 1 The Promise of Urban Growth, pp. 5-14 Online available at: http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm Additional resources Tate Modern: Global Cities Exhibit. Online available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/globalcities/default.shtm

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UNIT 2: EMERGENCE OF MEGACITIES AND SLUMS Abrupt accelerated growth

Before considering why Third World cities and their slums grew so fast in the second half of the twentieth century, it is first necessary to understand why they grew so slowly in the first half. Although there are some exceptions, most of todays megacities of the South share a common trajectory: a regime of relatively slow, even retarded growth, then abrupt acceleration to fast growth in the 1950s and 1960s, with rural in-migrants increasingly sheltered in peripheral slums. Davis (2006), p. 51

Colonialism, decolonization, and urban growth

The functioning (and profitability) of the colonial state relied on the migration of labour. It needed large concentrations of populations to come together to provide the labour for mines, plantations and the colonial administration. At the same time, with this mass movement of people there was great concern to ensure that such people did not settle permanently in these new centres. Labourers were welcome but they should retain their link with their homelands (). As African states gained their independence in the second half of the twentieth century, the control of urban growth remained an urgent policy concern (), many aid programmes [for example] focused on the development of rural areas, which was seen as essential to enable people to stay in their villages rather than try their luck in the ever growing cities. Bakewell (2008) p. 4

Planning for big cities

Big cities are losing the poor because they cant afford to live there The result? We are sanitizing our cities, Kundu says. Sanitization means making the environment clean,...clearing the slums, pushing out the low-income colonies. And in the process, cities miss out on any opportunity to transform the urban poor into drivers of growth and development and instead perceive illiterate, unskilled workers only as liabilities to health, hygiene and law and order, he argues. UNFPA (2011), pp. 78-79.

African cities
Many urban spaces and practices in Lagos appear to confound existing bodies of urban thought, yet this does not preclude the possibility for rethinking or reworking what we already know about African urbanism or cities more generally. Appeals to various forms of African exceptionalism serve to contain the city within a category of ontological difference whilst obscuring the relationship between urban design and any meaningful forms of social or political deliberation. Gandy, M. (2006), p. 390

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Lagos

The state does nothing

In too many poor cities, citizens relationship to their government is similar to what a Nairobi slum-dweller recently described to a Guardian reporter: the state does nothing here. It provides no water, no schools, no sanitation, no roads, no hospitals. Indeed, the journalist found out that residents bought water from private dealers and relied on vigilante groups for securitythe police visited only to collect bribes. The minimalist role of national governments in housing supply has been reinforced by current neo-liberal economic orthodoxy as defined by the IMF and the World Bank. The Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed upon debtor nations in the late 1970s and 1980s required a shrinkage of government programs and, often, the privatization of housing markets. Davis (2006), pp. 62-63.

World Bank and the NGO revolution

Since the 1990s the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and other aid institutions have increasingly bypassed or short-circuited governments to work directly with regional and neighborhood non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Indeed, the NGO revolutionthere are now tens of thousands in the Third World citieshas reshaped the landscape of urban development air in much the same way that the War on Poverty in the 1960s transformed relations between Washington, big city political achiness, and insurgent inner-city constituencies. Davis (2006), p. 75

Factory girls
Her first week on the job, Min turned seventeen. She took a half day off and walked the streets alone, buying some sweets and eating them by herself. She had no idea what people did for fun. Before she had come to the city, she had only a vague notion of what a factory was; dimly, she imagined it as a lively social gathering. I thought it would be fun to work on the assembly line, she said later. I thought it would be a lot of people working together, busy, talking, and having fun. I thought it would be very free. But it was not that way at all. Chang, L.T. (2008), p. 6
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Literature Course Book Davis (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. (75 pp) Chapter 3 The Treason of the State pp. 50-69 Chapter 4 Illusions of Self-Help pp. 70-94 Chapter 7 SAPing the Third World pp. 151-173 Readings Bakewell, O. (2008). Keeping Them in Their Place: the Ambivalent Relationship between Development and Migration. In Third World Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 7, pp. 13411356. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 Chang, L.T. (2008). Chapter 1: Going Out. In Factory Girls, pp. 1-14. New York: Spiegel & Grau. Online available at: http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/lmong/Factory_Girls_chp1.pdf Gandy, M. (2006). Planning, Anti-planning and the Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos. In Urban Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 371390, February 2006. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 UNFPA (2011). State of the World Population: People and Possibilities in a World of 7 Million. New York: UNFPA. Chapter 6, Planning ahead for the growth of cities, pp. 77-91. Online available at: http://www.unfpa.org/public/op/preview/home/sitemap/swp2011

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UNIT 3: MELTING POTS OR BOILING POTS? Identities

In our normal lives we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups we belong to all of them. A persons citizenship, residence, geographic origin, gender, class, politics, profession, employment, food habits, sports interests, taste in music, social commitments, etc., make us members of a variety of groups. Each of these collectivities, to all of which an individual belongs, gives her a particular identity. None of them can be taken to be the persons only identity or singular membership category. Sen, A. (2007), pp. 4-5 It is not so much that a person has to deny one identity to give priority to another, but rather that a person with plural identities has to decide, in case of a conflict, on the relative importance of the different identities for the particular decision in question. Reasoning and scrutiny can thus play a major role both in the specification of identities and in thinking through the relative strengths of their respective claims. Sen, A. (2007), p. 29

Rescaling cities, cultural diversity and transnationalism

Unless we link the shifting opportunity structures facing migrants to the scalar positioning of their locality, we fail to appreciate adaptive migrant practices, collective patterns of organization, strategies of participation and the ways these are linked with significant transformations underway within the context of uneven globalization. aglar, A. (2007), p. 1090

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Global cultural cities

Over recent decades in Asia, many cities have embraced an entrepreneurial regime and experienced dramatic transformations as they adapt to new, accompanying socioeconomic imperatives predicated on the mobilising myth of becoming a global city. As a discursive category conjuring up imaginaries of high modernity, megadevelopment, 21st-century urbanity and progressive urban futures in the new millennium, the global has become an icon or a spatial metaphorwith considerable political power. Yeoh, B. (2005), p. 946

Transnationalism and suburbia

Processes of transnationalism are helping to refashion the socio-cultural milieu of other cities, particularly within countries that have actively sought new migrant streams, such as New Zealand. This refashioning of social spaces is at once spectacular (resulting in new residential landscapes and built environments) and mundane. ()we wish to explore various dimensions of transnational processes at work in hidden, less obvious, sites of urban change. Friesen, W. L. et al. (2005), p. 386

Contesting displacement in globalizing Kuala Lumpur

The globalisation of greater Kuala Lumpur over the past two decades is manifested in extensive landscape transformation. This paper considers two groups affected by this global landscaping: urban settlers without registered land title () squatters; and West Malaysias minority indigenous Orang Asli. These groups have frequently been displaced as demand for land has risen and as emergent moral and aesthetic evaluations about suitably global land use have rendered them out of place. Bunnell, T. and A.M. Nah (2004), p. 2447

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Kuala Lumpur

Literature Readings Bodaar, A. and J. Rath, (2005). Cities, Diversity and Public Space. In Metropolis World Bulletin, September 2005, Vol. 5., pp. 3-5. Online available at: http://international.metropolis.net/research-policy/World/World Bulletin_vol5_e.pdf Bunnell and Nah (2004). Lumpur Metropolitan Area Counter-global Cases for Place: Contesting Displacement in Globalising Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area. In Urban Studies, Vol. 41, No. 12, pp. 2447-2465. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 aglar, A (2007). Rescaling cities, cultural diversity and transnationalism: migrants of Mardin and Essen. In Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 1070-1095. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 Friesen, W., Murphy, L. & Kearns, R. (2005). Spiced-Up Sandringham: Indian Transnationalism and New Suburban Spaces in Auckland, New Zealand. In Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2, March 2005, pp. 385-401. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 Sen, A. (2008). Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York: W.W. Norton. Chapter 1, pp. 1-17 Chapter 2, pp. 18-40 Yeoh, B. (2005) The Global Cultural City? Spatial Imagineering and Politics in the (Multi)cultural Marketplaces of South-east Asia. Urban Studies, Vol. 42, Nos 5/6, pp. 945958. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42
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UNIT 4: PRECARIOUS LABOUR The informal economy

The recent re-convergence of interest in the informal economy stems from the recognition that the informal economy is growing; is a permanent, not a short-term, phenomenon; and is a feature of modern capitalist development, not just traditional economies, associated with both growth and global integration. For these reasons, the informal economy should be viewed not as a marginal or peripheral sector but as a basic componentthe base, if you willof the total economy [] Economic relationsof production, distribution and employmenttend to fall at some point on a continuum between pure formal relations (i.e., regulated and protected) at one pole and pure informal relations (i.e., unregulated and unprotected) at the other, with many categories in between. Depending on their circumstances, workers and units are known to move with varying ease and speed along the continuum and/or to operate simultaneously at different points on the continuum. Chen, (2007), p. 2 Previously, there was a widespread assumption that the informal sector was comprised of unregistered and unregulated enterprises whose owner operators choose to avoid registration and, thereby, taxation. While it is important to understand informal employment in relation to the legal framework in any given country, this is far from being the whole story. Chen (2007), p. 4

Beyond the formal-informal binary

... the fundamental problem with the formal-informal approach is it tells us what work relations and economies are not, i.e., formal. For the few who are formal, labor and social protections are increasingly elusive, as we argue in the following sections. Engaging the binary risks reinforcing it, thus further marginalizing vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the informal economy will not meet inevitable extinction. Work in the informal economy is unlikely to be transitioned into employment in the formal economy. Alternate theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to de-link social and labor protections from formal employment arrangements. Arnold & Bongiovi (2012), p. 5

New survival circuits

Over the last decade we have seen a proliferation of new or renewed survival circuits built on the backs of women --as trafficked workers for low wage jobs and the sex industry and as migrant workers sending remittances back home. A key aspect here is that through their work and remittances, women enhance the government revenue of deeply indebted countries and offer new profit making possibilities to "entrepreneurs" who have seen other opportunities vanish as a consequence of global firms and markets entering their countries or to long time criminals who can now operate their illegal trade globally. These survival circuits are often complex, involving multiple locations and sets of actors constituting increasingly global chains of traders and workers. Sassen (2005), p. 2
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Precarity
[precarious employment can be defined as] work for remuneration characterized by uncertainty, low income, and limited social benefits and statutory entitlements. Precarious employment is shaped by the relationship between employment status (i.e. self- or paid employment), form of employment (e.g. temporary or permanent, part-time or full-time), and dimensions of labor market insecurity, as well as social context (e.g. occupation, industry, and geography) and social location (or the interaction between social relations, such as gender, and legal and political categories, such as citizenship. Leah Vosko (2010), p. 2 [the precariat] consists of a multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth who do not like what they see before them, millions of women abused in oppressive labour, growing numbers of criminalised tagged for life, millions being categorised as disabled and migrants in their hundreds of millions around the world. They are denizens; they have a more restricted range of social, cultural, political and economic rights than citizens around them. Standing (2011) p. ..

Literature Readings Chen, M. A. (2007). Rethinking the informal economy: Linkages with the formal economy and the formal regulatory environment. DESA Working Paper No 46. Geneva: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2007/wp46_2007.pdf (pp. 1-11) Dennis, A. & Bongiovi, J. (2012). Precarious, informalizing and flexible work: transforming concepts and new understandings. American Behavioral Scientist, special issue on Precarious Work in Asia, submittted May 2012. (pp. 1-15). Sassen, S. (2005). Strategic Instantiations of Gendering: global cities and survival circuits. Online available at: http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/files/7374/11090837201SaskiaSassen.pdf/Sask iaSassen.pdf (pp. 1-23) Standing, G. (2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbyMM_q2VFg. parts 1-6 (lecture + Q&A) Vosko, L. F. (2010), Introduction and Alternatives to the SER, in Managing the margins: Gender, citizenship and the international regulation of precarious employment. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-25 & pp. 208-229

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UNIT 5: COMMODIFICATION OF THE BODY The Last Commodity

Though we like to think that our bodies are sacred and above the hardscrabble logic of the market, the sale of human parts is booming. Several billion dollars worth of humanity changes hands every year. With almost six billion people in the world the supply is significant In Egypt, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, entire villages sell organs, rent wombs, and sign away the rights to their bodies after death not only under duress, but also in mutually agreeable transactions. Middlemen who deal in human parts often hospitals and government institutions buy for the lowest possible price while assuring buyers that the parts come from ethical sources. Though procurement is sometimes abhorrent, the final sale is often legal and usually sanctioned by the implicit moral dimension of saving human lives. The crimes are covered up in a vail of altruistic ideals. Carney (2011), pp. 5 and 6

Pakistani men show their scars after their kidneys were removed

New Categories, Old Inequalities?

The neoliberal readjustments of societies worldwide to meet the demands of economic globalization have been accompanied by a depletion of traditional modernist, humanist, and pastoral ideologies, values, and practices. New relations between capital and labor, bodies and the state, inclusion and exclusion, belonging and extraterritoriality have taken shape. Some of these realignments have had surprising new outcomes...while others (for example, the spread of paid surrogacy in assisted reproduction) have reproduced all too familiar inequalities. Scheper-Hughes (2004), p. 145

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A Migrant World Of Services

Domestic worker and employer characteristics

My argument is that, while some migrants who sell sex, along with their migrations, can usefully be studied within the criminological frame, the vast majority should be treated by migration scholars, who need to resist an apparent taboo on sexual matters that leads to shyness or delicacy rather than straightforward study. (Agustn (2006), p. 29/30).

The Ethics of Farmaceutical Testing

Fleeing the empty test clinics of the West, drugmakers who have set up shop abroad wallow in an embarrassment of riches. The sick are abundant, and the costs are low. In India, apart from the low-cost of field trials, enthused a Pfizer press release, a billion people means there is never a shortage of potential subjects. In South Africa, a leading CRO noted on its Web site, patients suffered an extremely high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other major diseases including cardiovascular, diabetes, hypertension, mental illness and cancer. Their lack of access to medicines made them particularly appreciative of the free drugs offered in trials, no matter how experimental. Shah (2006), p. 8

Literature Readings Agustin, L. M. (2006). The Disappearing of a Migration Category: Migrants Who Sell Sex. In Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 29-47. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 Carney, S. (2011), The Red Market. New York: Harper Collins. Chapter 1 Introduction: Man vd Meat, pp. 1-19 Chapter 3 Kidney Prospecting, pp. 61 89
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Scheper-Hughes, N. (2004). The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in Fresh Organs. In A. Ong & S. Collier (eds.) Global Assemblages. London: Basil Blackwell, pp. 145-165. Online available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=svyTTXIPIScC&dq=Global+Assemblages &printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Xvi8SoHhHZL84AbFqajFCQ&s a=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=&f=false Shah, S. (2006). The Body Hunters. New York: The New Press. Chapter 1 Clinical Trials Go Global, pp. 1-17 Chapter 10 Tipping the Scales, pp. 164-174

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UNIT 6: ECOLOGY OF URBAN POVERTY Problems and solutions at once?

Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized world. Grimm et al (2008), p. 756

Urban inequality and segregation

Urban inequality in the Third World is visible even from space: satellite reconnaissance of Nairobi reveals that more than half of the population lives on just 18 percent of the city area (). Bombay, according to some urban geographers, may be the extreme: While the rich have 90 percent of the land and live in comfort with many open areas, the poor live crushed together on 10 percent of the land. Davis (2006), pp. 95-96 Urban segregation is not a frozen status quo, but rather a ceaseless social war in which the state intervenes regularly in the name of progress, beautification, and even social justice for the poor to redraw spatial boundaries to the advantage of landowners, foreign investors, elite homeowners, and middle-class commuters. Davis (2006), p. 98

Slum, Mumbai

The city: interconnectedness

a rigid division between the development of slums and the rest of the city does not reflect the reality of African cities. A focus on interconnectedness rather than differentiation is needed for a better understanding of slums as a structural phenomenon of urbanisation. This is particularly true for approaches to the study of environmental health in densely populated urban areas. Obrist, B. et al. (2006), p. 332
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The Zabaleen of Cairo

It can further be argued that the Zabaleen community is the victim of the Governments hidden agenda for the Moqattam district of Cairo. Behind the declared objectives of improving the zabaleens livelihoods and the settlements environmental conditions, of upgrading waste collection systems and of expanding the associated recycling industry lies a wider but hidden agenda involving urban redevelopment of this part of the city. Fahmi, W., & Sutton, K. (2006), p. 836

Zabaleen sorting bottles

Squatting in dangerous places

Squatters trade physical safety and public health for a few square meters of land and some security against eviction. They are the pioneer settlers of swamps, floodplains, volcano slopes, unstable hillsides, rubbish mountains, chemical dumps, railroad sidings, and desert fringes (). Precisely because [a] site is so hazardous and unattractive, it offers protection from rising land values in the city. Such sites are povertys niche in the ecology of the city, and very poor people have little choice but to live with disaster. Davis (2006), pp. 121-122

Sanitation nightmare
The global sanitation crisis defies hyperbole. Its origins, as with many Third World urban problems, are rooted in colonialism. The European empires generally refused to provide modern sanitation and water infrastructures in native neighborhoods, preferring instead to use racial zoning and cordons sanitaires to segregate garrisons and white suburbs from epidemic disease; postcolonial regimes from Accra to Hanoi thus inherited huge sanitation deficits that few regimes have been prepared to aggressively remedy. Davis (2006), p. 139

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Literature Course Book Davis (2006) Planet of Slums. London: Verso. (55 pp) Chapter 5 Haussmann in the Tropics pp. 95-120 Chapter 6 Slum Ecology pp. 121-150 Readings Grimm et al. (2008). Global Change and the Ecology of Cities. In Science, Vol. 319, No. 5864, pp.756-760. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 Obrist, B. (2006). Interconnected Slums: Water, Sanitation and Health in Abidjan, Cote dIvoire. In The European Journal of Development Research, Vol.18, No.2, pp. 319333. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 UN HABITAT (2011), The impacts of climate change upon urban areas. In Cities and Climate Change. Global Report on Human Settlements 2011, pp. 73-88. Online available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3086 Additional resources Fahmi, W., & Sutton, K. (2006). Cairos Zabaleen garbage recyclers: Multi-nationals takeover and state relocation plans. In Habitat International, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 809-837. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42

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UNIT 7: GLOBAL CRISES, SURPLUS HUMANITY OR URBAN FUTURES? Informality and place
Since the 1980s economic informality has returned with a vengeance, and the equation of urban and occupational marginality has become irrefutable and overwhelming. Informal workers, according to the United Nations, constitute about two-fifths of the economically active population of the developing world. Davis (2006), p. 176 Politically, the informal sector, in the absence of enforced labor rights, is a semifeudal realm of kickbacks, bribes, tribal loyalties, and ethnic exclusion. Urban space is never free (). A place on the pavement, the rental of a rickshaw, a days labor on a construction site (). Whereas traditional formal industries such as textiles in India or oil in the Middle East tended to foster interethnic solidarity through unions and radical political parties, the rise of the unprotected informal sector has too frequently gone hand in hand with exacerbated ethnoreligious differentiation and sectarian violence. Davis (2006), p. 185

Pavement Dwellers, Kolkata

Does language matter?

What worries me too is that use of the word slum will recreate many of the old stereotypes about poor people that years of careful research has discredited. By using an emotive word, the UN draws attention to a real problem but, in doing so, it evokes a response that it cannot control. As Gans points out in his condemnation of the term 'underclass', if the term 'is turned into a synonym for the undeserving poor, the political conditions for reinstituting effective antipoverty policy are removed'. The very word 'slum' confuses the physical problem of poor quality housing with the characteristics of the people living there. And, with so many unscrupulous governments in power around the world, the stereotype may be used to justify
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programmes of slum clearance. After all, how better to create cities without slums than by obliterating the eyesores? Gilbert (2007), p. 710

Economic growth vs. poverty alleviation?

Although pro-poor growth global city and pro-poor domestic city agendas are not necessarily incompatible goals for city leaders in theory, for example, Cape Town's municipal leaders promote both, evidence from the Cape Town case study raises concerns that in practice, success in the global marketplace has negative consequences for the urban poor, thus inhibiting the success of a pro-poor agenda. Lemanski (2007), p. 459

World Bank, 2009

A matter of perspective
Big cities are losing the poor because they cant afford to live there, Kundu said. Earlier, people would pick up something like 1,000 rupees [about $22] and come to Delhi and look for a job for a month. Now with 1,000 rupees you cant stay for a week. So the percentage of the poor in Delhi has gone down from about 55 per cent in three decades to 7 per cent. The result? We are sanitizing our cities Sanitization means making the environment clean,...clearing the slums, pushing out the lowincome colonies. And in the process, cities miss out on any opportunity to transform the urban poor into drivers of growth and development and instead perceive illiterate, unskilled workers only as liabilities to health, hygiene and law and order, he argues. UNFPA (2012), p. 77/78.

The importance of differentiation

A better consideration of the differences between groups of entrepreneurs could have several other ingredients. All policies for supporting survival entrepreneurs have to recognize the destructive uncertainty (Wood, 2003) under which they operate, and
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primarily aim at increasing security in several dimensions. Bureaucratic bottlenecks, harassment and corruption affect all enterprises, but it is the smallest and least formal ones that suffer most. Home-based firms in illegal settlements are hampered by deficient infrastructure, inaccessibility for outside customers, and an imminent threat of demolition; street businesses are subject to bribe extortion, temporary or permanent eviction, and confiscation of goods. Berner et.al. (2012), p. 392

Literature Course Book Davis (2006) Planet of Slums. London: Verso. (30 pp) Chapter 8 A Surplus Humanity pp. 174-198 Epilogue: Down Vietnam Street pp. 199-206 Readings Berner, E., Gomez, G. & Knorringa, P. (2012). Helping a large number of people become a little less poor: the logic of survival entrepreneurs. In European Journal of Development Research, vol. 24, pp. 382-396. Online available at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/journal/v24/n3/full/ejdr201161a.html Gilbert, A. (2007). The Return of the Slum: Does Language Matter? In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 697713. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 Lemanski, C. (2007). Global Cities in the South: Deepening social and spatial polarisation in Cape Town. In Cities, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 448461. Online available at: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/show/id=187390/langid=42 UNFPA (2012). State of the World Population: People and Possibilities in a World of 7 Million. New York: UNFPA. Chapter 6 Planning ahead for the growth of cities, pp. 77-91. Online available at: http://www.unfpa.org/public/op/preview/home/sitemap/swp2011

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