Planet of Slums

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-8 and Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Key Figures

Mike Davis

Mike Davis is an American urban theorist and historian whose scholarship uses a Marxist lens to argue for a more egalitarian and democratic society, calling himself a Marxist Environmentalist. Davis became involved in class, race, and labor activism at a young age, experiences that shaped the scope and intent of his career and advocacy for workers’ rights, leftist community organization, and environmental action. Despite being nicknamed “the prophet of doom” for his clear-eyed accounts of possible financial, political, and environmental catastrophes, Davis argues that his predictions are the logical outcome of historical precedents weighed against present factors. Nevertheless, Davis has a staunch belief in the human possibility, particularly in the solidarity and potential of the working class.

Davis is best known for the book City of Quarts (1990) about the historical forces that shaped Los Angeles. He has written 20 other books and countless essays. Davis is respected both as a scholar and activist; he is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (known colloquially as the MacArthur genius award).

Planet of Slums was born out of a well-received essay about global slums in an issue of Mute magazine. As a Marxist and urban theorist and historian, Davis critiques global financial and political powers by highlighting wealth inequality and class struggle as overarching factors in the development of slums.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Created in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, the IMF is intended to be an instrument of financial aid for countries seeking sustainable growth and prosperity. It is supposed to do this by supporting economic policies that promote stability and cooperation, aiming to increase productivity, job opportunities, and general economic well-being. Davis argues, however, that in practice the IMF’s policies have the opposite effect, blaming its influence for the proliferation of unsafe and untenable slums in the developing world.

Historically, after imperial countries like Britain, France, or the US, pulled their forces out of developing countries, they did not fully relinquish their hold over their former dominions, retaining financial control over ostensibly independent governments. The resulting instability forced many developing countries into sovereign debt, particularly in the 1970s; to cope with this debt, these countries’ governments became clients of the IMF, which required them to invest less in public health, education, and infrastructure to more rapidly repay their developed world lenders. Davis argues that these policies led to the proliferation of slums: Without state systems of affordable health care, educational programs, job creation initiatives, residents of slums faced increasingly grim options.

The World Bank

The World Bank, which was founded at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 alongside the IMF, provides loans and grants for governments—a resource intended to help developing countries sustainably grow their financial market by mobilizing capital through investments or serving as advisors to business and investment opportunities. However, Davis argues that the World Bank’s rhetoric of empowerment obfuscates the reality that it is actually responsible for the growth of poverty.

Founded on principles of self-help individualism, the World Bank promotes the idea that poor people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, tapping into their innate ingenuity. To this end, the World Bank offers supposedly low-cost loans to lower class individuals, though in practice, these instruments are too expensive for this group, becoming instead handouts to middle- and upper-class people who do not really need them. Moreover, Davis points out that the optimistic belief in people’s ability to improve their living conditions is naïve and terrible global institutional policy. In fact, Jan Breman, a researcher of poverty in India and Indonesia, has concluded that upward mobility for the world’s poorest people is largely a myth. 1990s studies confirmed that the World Bank’s efforts at upgrading slums and aid projects had mostly negligible results.