I have to say that I’ve pretty much never thought about any of this. Davis brings up many good points. I feel like our country is so industrialized and developed that we would never have a problem like this. But the more I think about it, people do seem too crowded in their living situations and it’s only going to get worse. Davis makes his point very clear in the first couple paragraphs. He says “For the first time the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural. Indeed, given the imprecisions of Third World censuses, this epochal transition may already have occurred.” Before reading this article, this honestly meant nothing to me and I didn’t realize how this could possibly affect us in years coming.
Davis makes many good points in his article about our global population. I always knew that the rural areas were less populated but never thought that the cities have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population since 1950 and it continues to grow. He talks about the countryside reaching its maximum population and will begin to shrink after 2020. Basically, every one’s going to move into the urban communities or the “slums.” What I found really interesting in this article was the talk about the slums. Davis says, “slums is also unusual in its intellectual honestly. One of the researchers associated…… defining the problem of global slums not as a result of globalization and inequality but rather as a result of “bad governance…… the primary direction of both national and international interventions during the last twenty years has actually increased urban poverty and slums, increased exclusion and inequality, and weakened urban elites in their efforts to use cities as engines of growth.” I find that very interesting considering that these interventions were supposed to help but completely failed.
Davis has really got me thinking about this urban population problem. I think we all need to think about it but when thinking of ideas to stop this problem just seems crazy to me. I don’t think there’s a way to deal with this problem, to be completely honest.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
For Steve Biskner:
ReplyDeletePLANET OF SLUMS
Mike Davis
Davis’s article brings a new issue into light which many including myself did not think about and that is the problems that come with the rise of the industrial society. Overcrowding will lead to health hazards and rural towns being forced to convert to a more urban setting, and technology eliminating some manual labor jobs just seems more harm than good and how come we didn’t see this coming sooner. The thought of no rural towns is damaging to people. Where will we vacation, escape, or grow crops? Not to mention that living in a crowded city before was bad and that was in good conditions. Slum conditions would just be devastating and hellish. With the rise of industrial society rural towns would be be obsolete according to Davis and America would basically become a glorified third world country.
Davis also talks about the slums and why they exist and how without them some countries would be in a worse situation than what they are in currently. Do I feel like we can do something now to change this? Possibly. But it’s a long shot because we have left this problem hidden under the rug until we rediscovered it and saw that it had gotten worse 10 fold. It might be too late.
For Richard Hayes II:
ReplyDeletePlanet of Slums
I agree, sometimes it almost seems like some cities will be impossible to move in because there are so many people walking. Last time I went to Chicago I was always struggling to move around on the sidewalks. Then when these people are around eachother I think it makes them more aggressive walkers, if that makes sense. But I noticed that people seemed like they were willing to push others down to get where they needed to go a few minutes earlier. In cities like that they walk out right in front of cars, its almost like a big heard of cows walking around. They are always trying to build more living spaces, but maybe what needs to happen is larger businesses need to spread out of the cities so people would not move to the over populated cities to get jobs. Also more people should commute to the cities to work. There are many people who do commute but we need people to stop moving into these cities and start taking trains or using other forms of transportation.
For Allison Grifhorst:
ReplyDeleteSo I agree with the summary as well. There are countries out there that have so many starving people. And the gap between the rich and the poor is getting worse. But seeing how our economy is right now we should not be focusing on other countries but our own. There are so many unemployed people who cannot feed their families. Instead of helping out other countries we need to help our own. There will soon be so many people out of work in our own state that people are going to have to leave. I know that this happened in the 80's as well. In Michigan there were no teaching jobs and people had to leave. We need our governor to step up and do something. People are going to start to go without and college numbers will go down because families cannot afford it.
im posting this now because before i could not read the older blogs because i have been having problems with this site and you said i could just do any other one.
ReplyDeleteI as the others agree with the writer about how david made us think about things at our age and really at any age people would not think about these things. i think the writer may have focused a little to much on what they think than rather than what the article discusses. our ideas are always good but are your ideas the same as his? I also agree with the writer 100 percent we need to be focusing on our own country and not everyone elses we do not have the worlds largest population or even close but rather we do have 40% of all resources in the world. shouldent their be something we can do. I think people need to think about the way we are living thir is so many options recycling is a great oe our dumps take up soooooooo much of our planet seriousley people get a garbage desposial and a reycling bin. also with all of these recorces im sure we could figire something out maybe make some duplezes if we share homes we share electricity and we slowley save things a little at at time. we dont want to end up like china puting restrictions on how many babies people can have we just need to reevaluate our options.
Davis brings up many great points in his article planet of the slums. I never looked at this problem the way Davis did but it was very enlightening. I agree with this summary because it got right to the point. Looking at it from Davis’s point of view I do see that many people do seem crowded in cities. This overcrowding that is happening around us will only lead to many problems. This will cause health problems and over population of cities. When I went back to my hometown Vacaville, Ca, I saw this working at its finest. Businesses are moving farther out into rural areas to expand to growing communities. I believe this is making people unhappy because of the idea of space invasion.
ReplyDeleteOvercrowding is leading to cities becoming more dirty and polluted. Slum conditions are becoming more like a third world country and that is unacceptable in the United States. In the United States people over look these problems because of our selfishness. We ass citizens need to put ourselves in this situation and feel what they experience. This problem needs to be realized by our citizens before it becomes to late.