Planet of Slums

Planet of Slums is a non-fiction book published in 2006 by American author and urban theorist Mike Davis. It chronicles the spread of poverty in cities around the world at a time when more than a billion people live in what the United Nations (UN) classifies as "slums."

Summary

In 1950, only 86 cities around the world had populations of one million people or more. When Davis wrote this book in 2005, he predicted that by 2015 there would be 550 such cities—a very close estimate, since according to the United Nations' last report, in 2016 there were just over 600 cities that met this threshold. Meanwhile, world population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050. Virtually all of this growth will occur in urban areas, and 95% of it will occur in developing countries. For instance, the combined urban population of China, India, and Brazil equals that of Europe and North America.

But these cities aren't urban Edens; they are deeply impoverished neighborhoods of makeshift dwellings—areas such as Beirut's Quarantina, Mexico City's Santa Cruz Meyehualco, Rio de Janeiro's favelas, and Cairo's City of the Dead, where up to one million people live in homes made out of actual tombs.