Joy Press says, in this review of Mike Davis' 'Planet of Slums': it "bears too little of the vivid prose or narrative thrust that fueled books like City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts, and what eloquence he does muster is smothered by the avalanche of figures and charts herded onto every page. The dense crush of ideas and information makes you wonder if Davis wanted to replicate the claustrophobia of the slums themselves." | Village Voice
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- Davis worries about a "fundamental reorganization of metropolitan space" around the world, with the rich often seceding from cities and retreating to the kind of gated communities familiar to Americans—very familiar, in fact, since Davis says they are "often imagineered as replica Southern Californias." Hence an estate on the outskirts of Beijing called Orange County, complete with homes designed by a Newport Beach architect. While the poor have little say in where they live (and so end up atop garbage heaps or in disaster-prone zones), the prosperous can reside in an "elusive and golden nowhere."
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THAT IS a very worrysome reality. physical division between haves and have nots, has always bankrupted at great costs to human lives and progress.
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