Just When I thought It Couldn’t Get More Offensive: Slums are a Good Thing?!?!?
March 1st, 2010
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I don’t even know that I need to comment about why this is so offensive, distasteful, disingenuous, ignorant and downright savage. This comes from Slashdot:
How Slums Can Save the Planet
“One billion people live in squatter cities and, according to the UN, this number will double in the next 25 years. Stewart Brand writes in Prospect Magazine about what squatter cities can teach us about future urban living. ‘The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents,’ writes Brand. ‘Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density — 1M people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai — and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.’ Brand adds that in most slums recycling is literally a way of life e.g. the Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 rag-pickers. ‘Of course, fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease, and injustice as much as business, innovation, education, and entertainment,’ says Brand. Still, as architect Peter Calthorpe wrote in 1985: ‘The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.’”
Reader Kanel adds this note of perspective:
“Kevin Kelly is another guy who wrote about slums in a very positive light, though he was more interested in self-organisation and why cities are cool, I think. Kelly also reports on the strange trend for slum tourism. What we’re seeing here is that the ’slums’ have become a vehicle for people to bring out their own ideas about cities, humans, and the universe at large. I have a feeling that we’re not really going to learn a lot about slums if we study them through these guys.”
Tourism? Self-organization? Why cities are “Cool”? The fact that comfortable westerners are willing to “tour” these destitute settlements of filth and desperation is offensive enough in its own right that they’d be gawked at. These are not places where people are being creative and expressive for the sake of the greater good, they’re simply trying to cope with inhuman conditions. If they figure out a way to stay alive in these miserable conditions, it’s not a beautiful work of self-organization, its human suffering, pure and simple.
I’m reminded of Joseph Stalin saying something like “One death is a tragedy – ten thousand are a statistic.” When you step back and see the slum grow and change, it might look like some kind of elegant mathematical expression, and perhaps it is. Yet what this is made up of is human beings, living in filth, squalor and constant danger of disease, fire, murder or any number of other things. And yes, while slums do often improve over time, it’s because the residents generally DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN SLUM CONDITIONS. Example: parts of New York City are now fashionable when in the late 1800’s they were about the cheapest and worst parts of the city. Nobody would want to go back!
Yes, I realize that this is a transitional thing and that some countries have not experienced industrialization to the extent they will eventually. Still, I’m amazed that these could be considered a good thing.
The original article is even worse. The ass who wrote it seems to think it’s amazingly efficient to live in a slum and points out that many slums see food grown locally, even with “pigs raised on the third floor,” as it subsistence agriculture and living in the excrement of a pig is somehow a positive thing.
Life in the slums is also described as fairly pleasant:
In Bangkok’s slums, most homes have a colour television—the average number is 1.6 per household. Almost all have fridges, and two-thirds have a CD player, washing machine and a mobile phone. Half of them have a home telephone, video player and motorcycle
I’ve got news for this guy: if you’ve got more than one television, a landlines and a mobile phone and a refrigerator, you’re not in a slum! You’re just in a crowded, cheap community. Slums are worse than anyone could dream up as a vision of hell. (Although, a rickety community with descent modern convinces will be just as bad as a slum once an earthquake or typhoon comes through)
Regarding the Author:
Stewart Brand is one of the world’s most influential—and controversial—environmentalists. After graduating in biology from Stanford University, California, in 1960, he became involved with the hippy movement and writer Ken Kesey’s “merry pranksters,” who were the subject of Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test. Brand’s hugely influential Whole Earth Catalog, a counterculture guide to self-sustainable, communal living, was published between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter until 1998.
This seems so typical of the modern “Green” movement. This bastard is so full of himself, I wonder how he eats. Somehow being educated at Stamford, in the air conditioned halls of academia and then playing pranks while cruising the country in a VW bus that his parents bought him qualifies him to tell us how great life is amongst the stagnant open sewers in the filthy and disease ridden slums of India and Southeast Asia. I should point out that not everyone in the world had a chance to be “merry pranksters,” covering around while having sex with many unwashed partners, dropping acid, listening to Jefferson Airplane and sticking it to the man with their lighthearted antics over at Haight Ashbury.
Let me add: If it sounds like I’m being a bit un-scientific and less than totally unbiased on this topic, it’s because I am and I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m deeply offended by this son of a bitch and I loath all he stands for, the hypocrisy and self-serving narrow view that allows him to praise the suffering of our fellow man as he sits on his high horse and writes for a magazine. This is not just wrong, it’s downright evil. It’s the essence of the worst of all a human being can ever be. It is so revolting it actually surprises me, and I’ve seen some VERY revolting things.
So in conclusion:
DAMN STRAIGHT THIS MAKES ME MAD!
I’m not ashamed to say I’m furious at this little modern-day Eichmann. In fact, if he makes you mad, that doesn’t make you an irrational person, that feeling you have stiring inside of you is your sense of decency and humanity. If you have one of those, this kind of thing might stir it up a little bit.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 2:33 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Education, Enviornment, History, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:22 am
Stewart Brand… That’s this guy, right?
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/02/stewart-brand-on-npr-describing-how.html
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:24 am
I spent about two months in Mumbai (then Bombay) and I can tell you there is nothing good about the slums there at all. Even in the non-slum districts there were people who’s home was a patch of sidewalk.
While I was there some sewer project was being started and all along the main route I took to work every day they started dropping six foot culverts at intervals along the road. By day two these were being taken over by squatters, whole families would have moved into these pipes and set up house. I counted myself fortunate that I was done and gone before I had to watch them being evicted.
In Bangkok, the streets would get so crowed with people putting up structures, first on the sidewalk, and then encroaching on the road, that there was a special squad of cops, that went around with bulldozers opening things up, by plowing these people’s lives away. The actual slums there fester with cholera, continuity and regular floods render tens of thousands homeless.
Anyone that thinks there is anything romantic about this type of poverty, should be made to spend a week living it. I sure that they would be quick to change their tune.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:28 am
Slums are not a permanent state of affairs, they are a transitional state from the breathtaking cruelty of subsistence farming to something more resembling an actual city. Slums are an improvement in almost any metric you can think of over subsistence farming.
There is no magic wand that you can wave that will allow billions of subsistence farmers to make a rapid transition to a fullblown modern city without having some kind of gradual bottom-up urban development and that’s what a slum is. Trying to squash slums is very likely to backfire; it’d be much more helpful to develop low-cost durable building techniques, nuclear “batteries”, help them construct a functioning system of property rights(without property rights you have the tragedy of the commons; nobody invests in permanent housing and so forth until they can be reasonably assured a title), low cost education(various information technologies could have a huge role to play here) and so forth to make the transition to some kind of reasonable city faster.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:33 am
Soylent said:
It is preferable to subsistence farming, although only by a bit. I just find it revolting that anyone would see it as being something that should be encouraged or that it’s the way to live in general. It’s part of the journey toward civilization, yes, but it’s not a pleasant thing.
It’s not a grand wonderful lesson in how to live in a city – it’s wretched poverty.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:42 am
drbuzz0 said:
I would say that on the whole subsistence farming is the marginally better lifestyle, at least in some cases. I have yet to see a slum, in the Third-World I would call anything other than a living Hell.
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March 1st, 2010 at 7:12 am
drbuzz0 said:
Yupp, you won’t get any counter-argument from me on that point.
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March 1st, 2010 at 10:13 am
The question is not whether slums are good or bad, but to acknowledge the reality of slums and how they arise (as Soylent says, mostly as a preferable existence to subsistence farming), and ask what the best way forward is. Generally bulldozing these kind of slums is a horrible idea. Enabling the slum dwellers to improve their own area (quicker and more extensibly) seems a preferable approach, especially in situations where there is no way that the responsible level of government can handle the whole problem.
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March 1st, 2010 at 11:10 am
As Joffan says, slums are a fact of life. They can be a springboard to a better life, too. Here in Hong Kong, the Kowloon Walled City was where several of my friends were born. They’ve moved on, to (much) better things.
I’m not sure I agree that slums can bootstrap into decent living environments. The political and social factors which result in slums are hard to get around. When society gets it’s act together (decent, relatively uncorrupt government) and the need for the slum has gone, knock it down. Give the slum dwellers a decent pile of cash and let them take care of themselves.
This is a great story about the Walled City. It’s at the level of the people, and doesn’t suffer from the William Gibson inspired romanticization of the place.
http://www.hh.iij4u.or.jp/~asabe/hongkong/hkkyuuren.html
FWIW, I visited the Walled City many, many times from the early 1970’s, in both professional and personal capacities. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as, say, Mumbai, but it was not a place I’d want my kids to grow up in.
Some things that occurred to me at the time, and still resonate.
No social worker in their right mind would enter the place. The 40 hour working week was regarded with fascination and incomprehension. However, most people worked, and most people were ‘on the way up’. People ran businesses, had money.
There was no social safety net at all. People took care of their own.
The crime rate was lower than Hong Kong’s as a whole. I would say for certain that the crime rate was lower than what you’d find in some Kowloon police stations of the early 1970’s (Lee Rock, anyone?).
Regarding Joffan, again: “Enabling the slum dwellers to improve their own area (quicker and more extensibly) seems a preferable approach” doesn’t work (or didn’t). Well off slum dwellers become the victims of criminals and the police. Gentrified slums mean money… best keep your head down, and don’t make waves. Slum dwellers are right at the bottom of the social power structure… that means your daughters end up working as prostitutes and your sons lose hands in sweatshop factories.
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March 1st, 2010 at 2:26 pm
I understand that slums are a fact of life, but the way the author describes them as being a positive kind of thing that should be admired and that the author seems to make light of the living conditions still bothers me a lot.
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March 1st, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Agree with Joffan. I think you need to read Brand’s whole book and not just take someone else’s quote out of the overall context. He seems to be pretty much converted from a ‘modern day green’ man and is certainly no Eichmann. He is also an advocate opposing bad science pretty eloquently in ‘Whole Earth Discipline’.
He does not ‘judge’ the life in the slums at all if you read the whole thing, and I suspect none of us can – anymore than we can judge the life of an Innuit, Aboriginal bush man or nomad from in front of our 50 inch plasmas.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I’m a little suprised at this attack on Brand, given his recent expressions of support for nuclear power. While I certainly agree that conditions in third world slums are appalling, whatr Brand says about lower ecological impact is correct. The trick will be to go to the next step and provide these people with something better in the way of urban living. As far as I can see, Brand supports the right things to move in that sirection.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:37 pm
JOhn said:
It’s not a quote, he wrote an article for a magazine. That’s what I read. As far as reading his entire book, I suppose I might at some point, but I’ve already got a lot of books in my queue to read and I’m currently finishing off two. I find there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime to read all the books on my “i’d like to read” list.
Finrod said:
I don’t automatically praise anyone who supports nuclear power. The Soviets were big on nuclear power and I don’t think the leaders of the Soviet Union were great individuals worthy of praise.
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March 1st, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Well, technically slums may well be very good for the environment when compared to more prosperous cities. In fact, a plague that wipes out the entire human race would be extremely good for the environment too.
(Of course, good for the environment is not always the same thing as good for people.)
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March 1st, 2010 at 7:15 pm
It’s more pie in the sky green crap.
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March 1st, 2010 at 10:47 pm
I agree that calling slum life in any way pleasant is wrong, but you should lay off Brand a bit. First, he is certainly not “typical of today’s ‘green’ movement”. Brand has in recent years advocated many technologies typically scorned by your average brainless hippy, such as nuclear power, genetic engineering, and geoengineering. Second, believe his argument something along the lines of what you said in the comments; slums aren’t great but they are better than the traditionally romanticized village life. They also increase opportunity and give people the chance to pull themselves out of poverty.
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March 2nd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
You can get an idea of Stewart Brand’s idea by watching his presentation at TED:
http://blog.ted.com/2009/07/stewart_brand_p.php
I’m a lukewarmer myself, so I don’t agree with what he was saying about climate except we need to transition from carbon based power to nuclear. Unfortunately he didn’t cover the parts of his book about metagenomics during his presentation. You can download a podcast and a book about metagenomics from here:
http://dels.nas.edu/metagenomics/overview.shtml
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March 2nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm
He’s right, slums are a low impact way of housing a lot of people. Move on million people from the countryside into slums, and you have lowered the environmental impact a lot.
This is my take away: What does this conclusion mean in practice? While, first of all, it means you don’t want to move people out of slums and into lower density housing developments (whether free or paid). For example, removing people from the Favellas in Brazil for distributed lower density towns would the be the wrong kind of change. The policy of the first world should not be oriented towards eliminating slums, if anything, we need to focus on discouraging marginal agriculture (high impact agriculture) and low density living. This means keeping farm subsidies up so that food is cheap in the third world and people aren’t incentived to grow food in marginal conditions.
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March 2nd, 2010 at 8:20 pm
High density housing doesn’t necessarily equate to poverty. If you look at Peter Cooper Village—Stuyvesant Town in New York City, it has 25,000 people living on 80 acres. That works out to 200,000 people per square mile. I’ve checked the prices and I can’t afford to live there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cooper_Village%E2%80%94Stuyvesant_Town
The population density of Manhattan is around 70,000 people per square mile. At that density, the whole population of the United States would fit in New Jersey. If we could build cities with that density as typical, we could leave 99% of the United States as farm land or wilderness. I have to admit that I don’t know anyway to get there from here, since it would involve the replacement of almost all the housing stock in the United States.
A lot of my ideas about this were formed when I read the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle novel “Oath of Fealty” many years ago. It involves an Arcology where 250,000 people are living in a single huge building.
In the novel, the wealth of the residents in the Arcology caused friction with the residents of Los Angeles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Fealty_(novel)
I reread it recently and it holds up well for something written 28 years ago.
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March 2nd, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Joel Upchurch said:
Yes, but New York has a much higher ecological impact when you consider the amounts of goods consumed by the people living there.
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March 2nd, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Steve… hear the guy out…
http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_on_squatter_cities.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies.html
…and drop your Single Story about what a squatter city is.
Rigth now, you are reacting to Stuart Brand as a greenie is reacting to you when you say nuclear is clean and effecient and that for instance windpower is a marginal thing.
You’re better than that, aren’t you?
/Michael
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March 2nd, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Two items: I don’t know how many of you have actually been through a Third-world slum, but until you have, until you have seen the conditions, smelled the smells, felt the despair, and realized the total magnitude of some of these places, you cannot hold a considered opinion. There is no cinematic treatment that can do justice to the shear horror that life is like in most of these places. I know what Brand is trying to say, but he is way off base at the very least. The squats of Amsterdam are not the same as the community that lives on the Sao Paulo garbage dump, and there are not many valid parallels that can be drawn between them.
The second thing is I am really getting tired of these damn TED talks, they are far too linear, and far too slow for me, and I am beginning to resent the time I seem to have to spend watching them to stay current. But that’s just a personal thing.
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March 2nd, 2010 at 10:57 pm
DV82XL said:
Allow me to paraphrase…
I don’t know how many of you that have actually been to a children’s hospital in The ukraine, but until you have, until you have seen the illnesses, felt the hopelessness, and realized the total magnitude of what nuclear power is… you don’t hold a concidered opinion.
End paraphrase…
So let’s dispense with the bull. Brand obviously hit an extermely sore spot here. I can’t tell if he’s right or wrong… but neither can I say about you guys… and Brand at least has some numbers to back it up. What do you gave have except loads of bile and some preconceived ideas about what squatter cities are?
All hear from you so far is “He’s, like so totally wrong, y’know what I mean?”. Can you back up your arguments with something other than a couple of photographs and what borders on ad hominem attacks?
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March 2nd, 2010 at 11:29 pm
It’s interesting that Brand openly criticises the Villager movement. Maybe that’s part of the hyperbole about the attractions of slum life. He’s saying that even life in a third-world slum is better than the kind of future the neo-primitivists want for the billion or two who might survive under their policies.
Speaking of policies, given that urbanisation is likely to proceed in one form or another, what kind of policies need to be put in place to promote a more benign outcome than 2 billion people living in slums?
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March 2nd, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Michael Karnerfors said:
There is nothing preconceived about my opinions of Third World slums Michael, because I have been in the places I have written about in this thread. Have you? Because if you have not then you Sir, have no right to denigrate my remarks as ad hominem attacks.
As for Brand and his numbers, I have no way of telling where he got those. Brand and I are about the same age, and I have heard, and read many thing he come up with over the years, and they have all been very optimistic in their analysis of whatever Great Idea that has caught his attention at the moment. That’s not an attack on the man, as it is an observation based on his record.
It’s what he does. For every group of hippies that went out on the land to form a commune with a lid of hash and a copy of the Whole Earth Catalogue, there were thousands that used the book to daydream, and that was its market, and everyone involved with that publication knew it.
Now I am glad he has come out in favour of nuclear energy. I personally suspect that he did so to save himself from sipping completely into irrelevancy, because no one was looking to him for sound bites, or inviting him to talks and conferences before he did, and the man makes a living as a promoter. Well that’s fine, but just being in favour of nuclear energy isn’t enough in my books to give you a free pass to spout BS and expect my support.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 2:44 am
DV82XL said:
And similary, when I debate nuclear power I constantly run into people who say “I have been to the fall-out affected areas in Belarus, and the Ukraine… I have seen ill children there… therefore all nuclear power is evil”.
I have no doubts that some slums are really bad and unfit for living in. I have no doubt that all slums are of lesser standards than we would by western eyes concider adequate.
But(!)…
…that is clearly not the full story. That is clearly not the only story out there. And with that your visits fall into the category of anecdotal evidence, wouldn’t you agree?
I don’t know where you have been, but I know you have hardly been everywhere. Have you for instance been to Mumbai that Brand uses in his examples?
As for Brand and his numbers, I have no way of telling where he got those
Well then… would you at least agree that if his numbers can be validated, his opinion probably has some merit?
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March 3rd, 2010 at 4:00 am
Michael Karnerfors said:
Technically I am only offering anecdotal evidence. However, it is all the evidence I need to dismiss Brand’s take on the situation, and my view is in fact shared by the majority of those that have witnessed these places first hand. Unlike Belarus, and the Ukraine where there is more of a divided opinion and ulterior motives to consider that may be biasing those reports.
In the long run, it doesn’t matter all that much, as frankly nobody considers Brand any sort of intellectual heavyweight, and like I said up thread, he has promoted a number of ideas over the years that are very evocative and entertaining, but in the end lack substance. That’s fine as far as it goes, and there is room for that sort of thinking in the world. My issue, is somewhat like Doc’s: I find this one in poor taste.
Michael Karnerfors said:
Yes, if you look at the remarks I made in comment #2, I mention that I spent some time in that city years ago. I also spent a weekend there more recently in transit to Goa, while there was some changes, I certainly didn’t see much improvement among the poor in the street.
Michael Karnerfors said:
Somewhat of a leading question, as it depends on the quality of the proof. I won’t be holding my breath.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 4:37 am
DV82XL said:
That too is a kind of argument I have heard. “That is all I need…. you can’t sway me… I know enough”.
DV82XL said:
Appeal to popular opinion, coupled with something that is not even established to be the popular opinion.
Again… “Everyone that has seen those sick children agree that nuclear power is evil…”. i run into it all the time.
DV82XL said:
There’s your ad hominem right there.
DV82XL said:
Ireelevant argument because past statements say nothing about the veracity of the current one.
DV82XL said:
So basically it’s an appeal to emotion of sorts? “Eeew, I don’t liek this so it must be wrong!”?
DV82XL said:
And what data did you pick up about the living conditions there compared to what the now urbanized people had before they moved into the city? How many did you find that sadi “I’d much rather go back out”?
DV82XL said:
That’s why I highlighted the “if”… and with that you have just invalidated your entire post up above.
Yes you got an emotional response from Brand’s statements… an emotion of repulsion, because this did not fit with your gut feeling and your world image.
But what if he’s right? What if his numbers are correct? What are the implications?
No, of course this is not reason to see squatter cities as good! Noone is that stupid, not even Brand. But it it’s still better than the alternatives.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:41 am
Michael Karnerfors said:
I think you have lost sight of what started this thread at the beginning: this is about the degree to which these ideas are found to be offensive.
The quality of being offensive, is by definition an emotional response and thus dependent on the perspective of those who are effected. Given this is the case, the reasons I have given are indeed valid within the scope of the initial statement. It is not necessary therefore, that I provide any reasons beyond those which underpin my opinion of subject. In fact it is hardly relevant if Brand’s premises are correct or not, since this is not germane my position.
Not that I am saying he has a point you understand, based on my familiarity with his past work I don’t find him all that credible to begin with and I still don’t believe he is right in any factual sense, as his assertions are at odds with my own observations. He is not taken seriously as holding a valid scientific opinion in these matters, and he does have a history of making sweeping statements of this sort, without much in the way of fact to support them. Again these are qualitative assessments, well within the bounds of the type of statement I am making about the idea at hand.
As for any argument based on ‘but what if he is right,’ I do not accept the premise for the same reason I will not assume the hypothetical ‘but what if there is a God’ when debating religion, since that is the conclusion I am ultimately rejecting.
Finally, and you know this Michael, the onus is on those making the initial statements to prove that they are indeed based on fact. Brand (or you) may not demand that I, or anyone else accept a statement as true until proven false which is essentially what you are attempting to do here. So even if this was an argument based on Brand’s ideas, (instead of my revulsion to them) he would first have to prove the premises correct before drawing any conclusions, and he simply has not.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:43 am
DV82XL said:
Are you saying he just made up the numbers he is showing in the TED lectures?
/Michael
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March 3rd, 2010 at 9:27 am
I haven’t read Brand’s book, but I listened to a rather long interview and I think you have a misconception about his opinions. Maybe, he deserves some criticism, but for instance in the interview he discussed one of the residents of Mumbai’s slum and it was mainly to point out the man’s ingenuity and determination and concluded with Brand stating that he would not want to stand between this man and a better life, and that he felt he would not be living in a slum forever.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 10:03 am
Michael Karnerfors said:
No, not necessarily but they are unsourced, and certainly taken out of context, and seem to be at odds with what can be found via a quick search of the web.
He claims Mumbai creates 1/6th of India’s GDP, the Government of Maharashtra State says it’s 1/20th
He implies that much of this is due to the economic action in the slums however the city accounts for 25% of India’s industrial output, 40% of her maritime trade, and 70% of the country’s capital transactions according the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. Hardly the sorts of activities one would normally associate with slum-dwellers.
Which brings me back to what I wrote up-thread about TED talks; they are a poor substitute for scholarly discourse – they are the ultimate Appeal to Authority, and little else. Brand may well have found his numbers in some nominally legitimate source, but without being able to reference them, they are little better than conjecture.
Anyway the migration of surplus agricultural labor to urban areas is nothing new; it has been happening, more or less continuously since the dawn of civilization ( i.e. living in cities.) It is a well studied field with tombs of drydust data going back centuries. It’s highly unlikely that an intellectual gadfly, like Brand has developed anything all that novel on the subject.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 10:18 am
No matter what our emotional reaction to these 3rd world slums is that people are moving to them by the millions because they offer more opportunities than they can find in the countryside. In a generation Mumbai might be the next Hong Kong.
The most important thing is to try to improve the conditions of these slums and encourage them on the upward path. The first thing is creating basic utilities for these area. Reliable water and electricity would vastly improve the living conditions. Cell phones have already improved things greatly and cell phone services has evolved into a lot of basic banking services. Setting it up so they can pay for electricity in the same way would help a lot.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 10:29 am
Bruce said:
Do you have documentation that the per capita consumption of resources by New Yorkers is higher than the average suburbanite? In terms of land resources it is obviously untrue. New York City consumes less energy per capita than any state.
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2203
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March 3rd, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Joel Upchurch said:
I just mean that New Yorkers consume a lot more then the people living in the Mumbai slums. The slums in Mumbai are much more green than New York is, the people there live with a much lower environmental impact.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
To be clear: I do not think that Mumbai’s slums are desirable from a human perspective. But from an environmental perspective, they are a lot lower impact on a per capita basis.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Bruce said:
I don’t think so Bruce. Some of Brand’s vaunted slum industries, like burning old circuitboards for the metals, and in Dharavi, one of Mumbai’s biggest and longest standing slums most of the fuel used for this and everything else, is from burning cloth scraps which make for a constant haze about the place. The most polluting and biggest of the slum’s myriad industries are leather tanneries and potteries. The air, noise, and water pollution in Dharavi are well above tolerable levels. None of the human waste is processed, and there is only one toilet per 1,440 residents leading to endemic cholera and the highest infant death rate in Asia.
Dharavi is considered to be a growing threat to Mumbai, and plans are afoot to deal with it by eliminating the slum altogether. It is unlikely the the current residents of the slum will get much out of it, and because they belong to the dalit caste, nobody much cares.
Personally I am beginning to think that Brand pulled this whole thing out of his ass the night before he made the presentation, because it is no reflection of the reality on the ground in India.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 8:43 pm
DV82XL said:
You’re missing an important point, the circuit boards and dirty industries they have serve the first world. If it weren’t for the consumer consumption of places like New York, there wouldn’t be these circuit boards to process. There are many factories around the world that are really part of the ecological footprint of New York, serving its demand for consumer products. There aren’t factories around the world serving the much lower impact slums of Mumbai.
I realize theres problems like Cholera. It would be great to get the basic infrastructure there to prevent such things, we can all agree on that. But it has to be developed in a responsible way that minimizes the resulting carbon output and minimizes the ecological footprint.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Perhaps you missed the line:“The most polluting and biggest of the slum’s myriad industries are leather tanneries and potteries.” These industries serve local markets.
You can also spare me your simplistic notions of responsible development. India is a very old, and very social complex culture, it is also rife with endemic corruption to the point where it is a line item on many legitimate businesses books. Places like Dharavi are not ‘developed’ they are tolerated until they become a large enough nuisance that they are ploughed under, and the space occupied by those that are already we to do enough to afford it. This process will not improve the lot of all but a token few of those living there now, because members of the dalit cast fall somewhere between rats and ****roaches in the minds of most higher cast Indians. Nobody there will give a damn what happens to them, as long as they are not underfoot.
There is nothing romantic about these places, you can’t compare a Northern European squatters village, populated by young middle-class kids on remittance, pretending they are doing something relevant and profound in their gap-year, and the lives of squalor and deprivation of an Asian slum, filled with human detritus hard-scrabbling to just to survive.
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March 5th, 2010 at 6:51 am
Bruce said:
Burning and melting circuit boards are done to extract valuable metals like gold and copper, the metal is sold locally I doubt any is exported unless the country also has gold or copper mines.
And yes it’s illegal to sell waste as broken down cars or electronic to 3-world countries, because the recycling create lots of pollution and the waste usually end up in the air or in water unfiltered. You can however sell to any western country as they have pollution laws who are enforced. The most polluted places on earth are in 3-world countries or previous communist countries. How environmental friendly the combination of poverty and overpopulation is can be seen on satellite photos of Haiti.
See this article as not only offending to poor people; it’s best for you that you stay poor, but mostly as a perversion of the noble savage myth. Yes the noble savage myth is also wrong for a lot of reasons but it’s not offensive.
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March 18th, 2010 at 6:43 am
Yeah Mao was pretty popular with poor people in rural China as well around 1960… Starving, beatings, theft, ignoring reality and various other forms of insanity. Calling a slum a great city is of the same kind of reasoning. Now if property rights exist, then a slum can be replaced. See Peru’s change towards private property.
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