Dispossessed

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in the countryside. And one in every three of these urban residents now lives in what the United Nations terms a slum — an informal settlement where land ownership is insecure; where residents build small homes out of cheap or found materials, such as plywood, plastic tarpaulin, corrugated tin, mud and wattle, or scrap metal or even, if they’re lucky, and cinderblock; where access to utilities like electricity and water is juryrigged and unreliable; where resilient countryside migrants have come to build a life, in search of jobs, education, and healthcare. 

 

Dispossessed relates stories about people living on the fringes of Manila, Nairobi, Mexico City, Bangkok, and Cairo — along railroad tracks, in garbage dumps, on river banks ... Here slum residents talk about their fears and their struggles, as well as their hopes and joys. Dispossessed explores the complex causes of our world’s rapid urbanization and its effects in particular on poor nations and cities in the global South. It also describes potential solutions to poverty and insecurity that some residents and agencies are pursuing.

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by Mark Kramer

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ISBN: 1-57075-658-9