Shadow Cities

Neuwirth, Robert. Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World. Have written about this book here, so this post is just the final evaluation. In 1996, the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements--or Habitat--held a conference to discuss the housing issues they had been studying, and Robert Neuwirth began questioning both the policies in effect and his own responsibilities. With 70 million people entering entering urban areas, and neither government nor private builders prepared to handle these overwhelming numbers, Neuwirth decided to write about these squatters and the communities they built themselves.

He chose four cities-Rio, Mumbai (Bombay), Nairobi, and Istanbul- for his investigation and, securing a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, he lived in each of the slums, favelas, or "shadow cities," examining the infrastructures first hand, meeting his neighbors, and experiencing the life of the squatters for himself.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, Neuwirth has a pretty positive view of these squatter communities, seeing human innovation and persistence paying off in three of the four. Kibera, the slum in Nairobi, was so immersed in a system of corruption and poverty that it didn't produce the forward movement that occurred in the other three areas.

Corruption was evident in all of the areas, the Kibera slum was just much worse. In Rio, Mumbai, and Istanbul, the communities in which Neuwirth lived achieved much, although at great difficulty and over a long period of time.

Since I've already written so much about the book, I'm going to cut this short and say that Neuwirth had no guaranteed solutions to this growing problem, but felt that governments trying to solve the problems without extensive input from the communities themselves had little chance of improvement. Self-determination seemed to be his by-word.

This article gives an excellent overview of the book. Neuwirth also keeps a blog, Squattercity that records developments around the world.

Another book that covers many of the problems with slums is Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found which I reviewed here; Mehta's book covered much more than the slums, but many of the problems Neuwirth mentions are discussed in Mehta's excellent book (one of the best I've read this year).


Nonfiction. Journalism, travel, memoir, social criticism. 2005. 315 pages.


***Lotus sent me this book complete with Bookcrossing label. If you are interested in reading Shadow Cities, leave me a comment. I'll put the names in a bowl, have a drawing on July 4th, and send the book to the winner.

Maximum City

Mehta, Suketu. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.

When Suketu Mehta returned to Bombay, he didn't find the city he left behind in 1977 at fourteen. Of course, there is no way he could have found the same city because at 14 our memories of place are so limited and intimate. The Bombay he left was the Bombay of his childhood and the Bombay to which he returned as an adult could never be the same. The city of nostalgic childhood memories has undergone huge changes in 21 years, rapid and drastic changes.

Mehta then goes about learning this new city. Not that he hasn't visited in those 21 years because he has, many times. Many Indians in America yearn for their homeland and question Mehta about his experiences when he moves his family back in 1998. Can they go home again?

Mehta ponders the question asked by those who consider a return: "To what India do you want to return? For us, who left at the beginning of our teenage years, just after our voices broke and before we had a conception of making love or money, we kept returning to our childhoods. Then, after enough trips of enough duration, we returned to the India of our previous visits. I have another purpose for this stay: to update my India, so that my work should not be just an endless evocation of childhood, of loss, of a remembered India. I want to deal with the India of the present." He concedes, however, that the "terrain is littered with memory mines."

Gradually, and with much difficulty, the Mehta family comes to terms with the "country of No" and learns to negotiate the hazards and the difficulties of a country that operates in a manner unique unto itself. Mehta, a journalist, begins learning his new India by researching the 1993 riots, Bal Thackeray, and the Shiv Sena. He interviews murderers and politicians. He examines the role of the police. This is fascinating stuff. Often dismaying stuff. The moral compass seems awry. How can this murderer seem so normal? How can politicians be so callous, so corrupt?

Mehta also examines the gangs and gangwar; bar dancers; the movie industry- actors, directors, and gangsters, again; social advancement; religious differences... Every story is a story of an individual, of humanity, of a city in transition. And every story is compelling.

This book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and deservedly so. I found it absolutely compelling. It is long and complex, informative, intriguing.

Non-fiction. Journalism, travel, memoir. 542 pages. Copyright 2004.

Also wrote about this one here.

Now reading... (with thanks to Lotus)

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta (originally discovered by way of Lotus Reads). So far, while certainly educational, the reading is almost like following the adventures in a novel. Excellent.

Mumbai (what was once called Bombay) is, in a strange way, a model city. It is an example of what can happen when too many people and too rapid expansion occur with too little foresight. And foresight is not a strong characteristic of governments or political parties anywhere in the world. Thus, Mumbai reminds me of examples of futuristic cities in some science fiction novels: A place where events have gotten ahead of themselves, where additional layers are added onto faulty foundations, where great technological advances and unimaginable poverty exist side by side, where space is at a premium and dependable infrastructure at a minium, where crime is often the only way to improvement, where the crucial necessity of water is difficult to come by and often contaminated, where those who work tirelessly for improvement are met with impossible odds. Where giving up and throwing up one's hands would be easier than battling what must seem inevitable. It is an example that the world should be paying attention to if there is to be hope for the future. For many of the problems this Maximum City faces exist all over the world...in incipient form and in smaller locations. Mumbai is a wake-up call of sorts.

Mehta's voice is comfortable, skilled, ironic, witty. I'm reading about events that have escaped my notice in my comfortable suburban world, but that have had huge effects on millions of people in Bombay. I'm reading with more comprehension than might have expected because Mehta manages to balance the humanity, the history, and the political so well.

Again, I read non-fiction much slower than fiction; yet, each time I pick up this book, my hands eagerly seek out my place, and I'm soon immersed in Mehta's Bombay.