Category: Cities

Recovering the lost urban poor

21 October, 2009 (09:56) | Archeology, Cities, Manchester, Slums | 1 comment

By: David A. Smith

Statistics are not stories – but then again, stories are not statistics, and statistics represent the totality of real life.

We choose to remember our highlights and lowlights, our moments of intensity – and we choose to forget anything that is drab, commonplace, routine, or redolent of the profane. So, for [...]

The slum you need

2 October, 2009 (10:08) | Cairo, Cities, Egypt, Ragpickers, Sanitation, Slums, Water | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
They’re called zabaleen, after an Arabic phrase meaning ‘garbage people’, and you wouldn’t want to be one:
 

Most of the inhabitants of Garbage City are Coptic Christians.
An estimated 60,000 – 70,000 Zabaleen live in an area known locally as Garbage City, and are mostly descendants of poor farmers from Upper Egypt who settled [...]

The ultimate future city; 1984, Part 2, the slums of poverty

4 September, 2009 (09:43) | Cities, Science fiction, Speculation | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1].

 
Yesterday’s exploration of 1984 (a devastating movie, by the way) developed the poverty of slums: how Winston Smith and all his like were ground into subservience by squalid living conditions, deliberate under-maintenance, and oppressive overt surveillance – where both work and home are merely a low-grade prison.
 

Big Brother is watching you
 
Early [...]

The ultimate future city: 1984, Part 1, the poverty of slums

3 September, 2009 (12:01) | Cities, Housing, Science fiction, Slums, Speculation | No comments

Continuing our occasional series on the Ultimate Future City:
The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg, 12/07
Diaspar, The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke, 3/08
Cities in Flight, Part 1 and Part 2: 8/08
 

 
Perhaps the most famous year in fiction begins in the [...]

Reviving transportation?

21 August, 2009 (09:40) | Cities, Homeless, Immigration, Innovations, New York City, Policy | No comments

What to do with the homeless?  Can we just wish them away?
 

Just say yes, and an anonymous person vanishes
 
A moral-philosophy question rattling through cyberspace asks, If you were offered $1,000,000 to make someone disappear, would you?
 

Happy to make the stain of homelessness vanish?
 
Actually, as documented in this New York Times article, the cost is much [...]