Slums are a waypoint

ARTICLE: Stewart Brand: Save the Slums, By Douglas McGray, Wired, 09.21.09

Something to think about when we talk about the Muslim slums in Europe too:

Wired: What makes squatter cities so important?

Stewart Brand:
That's where vast numbers of humans--slum dwellers--are doing urban stuff
in new and amazing ways. And hell's bells, there are a billion of them!
People are trying desperately to get out of poverty, so there's a lot
of creativity; they collaborate in ways that we've completely forgotten
how to do in regular cities. And there's a transition: People come in
from the countryside, enter the rickshaw economy, and work for almost
nothing. But after a while, they move uptown, into the formal economy.
The United Nations did extensive field research and flipped from seeing
squatter cities as the world's great problem to realizing these slums
are actually the world's great solution to poverty.

Wired: Why are they good for the environment?

Brand:
Cities draw people away from subsistence farming, which is ecologically
devastating, and they defuse the population bomb. In the villages,
women spend their time doing agricultural stuff, for no pay, or having
lots and lots of kids. When women move to town, it's better to have
fewer kids, bear down, and get them some education, some economic
opportunity. Women become important, powerful creatures in the slums.
They're often the ones running the community-based organizations, and
they're considered the most reliable recipients of microfinance loans.

Point:
 slums are a waypoint that is virtually impossible to avoid.  It's not
about eradicating them but making sure people are processed, whether
you're talking internal migration (here) or true immigrants (Muslims in
Europe, everybody who passed through the "Little Xs" of NYC over the
decades.

Comments

[Louis Heberlein]

Didn't Jesus say we would always have the poor with us, but we should try to make their lives a little better? He also tried to use bottom up approach at transforming difficult social situations.