Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A Urban New World

Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A Urban New World

By: Robert Neuwirth  

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Investigative journalist Robert Neuwirth lived among squatter communities from Rio to Bombay to Nairobi to Istanbul to give us an impassioned, inside view of squatter life and a glimpse into the urban future. He met people in Nairobi who built homes with their bare hands, Turkish families who plot land invasions, and children in Rio whose parents justify outfoxing the authorities as the only path to a better life. And he shows us that in cities like Rio, squatter settlements have become decent places to live for formerly landless people. Tracing the notion of private property from the enclosure movement in Europe to the settlement of the U.S., Neuwirth shows how squatting rights may actually be seen as more "natural" than the current laws practiced in the U.S.

In almost every country of the developing world, the most active builders are squatters, creating complex local economies with high rises, shopping strips, banks, and self-government. As they invent new social structures, Neuwirth argues, squatters are at the forefront of the worldwide movement to develop new visions of what constitutes property and community.

Publisher: Routledge

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Neuwirth's Critique of Land Titling - In Shadow Cities, Robert Neuwirth asserts that squatter communities are effective despite the lack of formal law or law enforcement. He says that the only rule in many squatter communities is that no one may build anything permanent, and often construction groups based on family or friendship ties are formed to help each other. No one owns the land underneath their homes, but intricate structures have developed organically to manage land tenure, and the author praises these structures over formal property titling. In support of his contentions, Neuwirth states that formal title to land in some countries brought about an industry of document forgery, with dozens of people claiming ownership of some parcels, thus actual possession of land still takes precedence over an official (or forged) document. Further, he states that loans are almost impossible to obtain from banks, yet entrepreneurialism remains high; for example Kiberan women operate a system of investment/savings to help each other pay for business expenses or education. Neuwirth also argues that land titling does not unleash the value of dead capital, but rather brings in speculators, tax collectors, planners, and red tape; no bank will give a loan to someone whose collateral is ten square feet of land covered by a mud hut with no electricity, gas, or running water. Further, residents must pay bribes to get construction permits for titled land, and once constructed the residents are forced to pay higher taxes despite the fact that they get no services from the government. To him, the key is not titling, but rather assurance against eviction.

To critique Neuwirth's analysis, he argues against titling because corrupt officials ask for bribes and the government raises taxes on titled land, but this seems to be an argument not necessarily against titling, but against government corruption and high taxes. He also contradicts himself in describing some of the benefits of titling, for instance that people were able to use their land as collateral to get credit cards (yet he also says that banks will not give loans to people who put up their mud huts as collateral--the contention that a dwelling can't be used as collateral for a loan but can be used to obtain a credit card is interesting), but then dismisses these benefits with little explanation for their dismissal.

On a more theoretical level, Neuwirth's contentions taken to their logical conclusion at times seem to support anarchy and at other times support totalitarianism. For instance, he argues that squatters live by an ancient contention that everyone deserves to have a home, and they respect the territorial lines that each person or family draws around their property and thus the government does not need to title land. This is an indirect argument for anarchy, but at other times he asserts a veritable totalitarianism in saying that the government should demolish homes in areas that may be affected by flooding--allowing people to formulate their own rules, build their own homes, and set up their own property lines in some areas and demolish settlements in others seems inconsistent. This contention is not only inconsistent but also impractical; the City of New Orleans is built in a flood prone area, but the people in that city would be better served by having the government help them protect against and/or recover from flooding than by having the government demolish any structure built in the area. Even further, Neuwirth's arguments against property titling assume that everyone will respect each other's boundaries based on the fact that some people in some urban areas respect each other's boundaries, but he gives no evidence that these boundaries will be respected by all members of every society to the same degree that well enforced formal law and property rights must be respected by any member of any society. In conclusion, Neuwirth has done a good deal of interesting research in this book, but further explanation of his reasoning would be helpful.

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Disappointing, Of Passing Utility - This book was very disappointing. Although at 54 I am getting to the point where I need granny glasses to read those books where the print is too fine, this book goes way in excess to the other side: large print and triple spacing. This book is a 60 page article inflated to 300 pages.

The author has endured privation and offers many useful observations in the book, which makes it one of passing utility, but I put book down feeling somewhat dismayed as well as disappointed. Unlike C. K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks),which made the very compelling case for taking the five billion poor's four trillion a year economic needs much more seriously, this book left me with absolutely no sense of "what is to be done."

This is a travelogue, not a policy book. Worth reading, but it could have been so much more than I am obliged to give it my lowest rating for any book that makes my reading list--three stars.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Myths are dispelled and realities outlined - SHADOW CITIES: A BILLION SQUATTERS, A NEW URBAN WORLD confronts the issue of nations of squatters. Cities are home to a billion such squatters and that number is projected to double in a generation, so any college-level student of urban planning needs to understand the experiences, issues and results herein. Reporter Robert Neuwirth spent two years living in squatter neighborhoods on four continents, so his exploration comes not just from an outsider's perspective, but from one who has lived amongst them. Myths are dispelled and realities outlined in a hard-hitting consideration of facts and social issues.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Excellent read - This is one of the best books I have read in a while. The author - Robert Neuwirth - lived in four slum areas in or near major cities in the third world and then reported what he found. Neuwirth seems to have a unique knack for putting threads of stories together in a way that produces a compelling and fascinating tale. He reports bits and pieces of information received from local squatters, landlords, politicians, social activists, etc., and put together a story that seems so complete that you feel that you have the "feel" of life in these places.

The book does have weaknesses. His historical accounts of slums strike the reader as piecemeal and thrown together. The portions of the book which deal with various proposed solutions fail to even discuss the significance of overpopulation in the etiology of slum development.

But I gave the book four stars nonetheless. Neuwirth's first hand account of slum life in the modern world is almost spellbinding. Contrary to what one would expect, the book is not just an endless recitation of privation and poverty. The "slums" that he describes contain tales of triumph as well as oppression; ingenuity as well as exploitation. The book celebrates the human spirit as well as it pointing out its sins.

Some of things reported in the book will surprise. For instance, the Brazilian "slum" of Rocinha is so vibrantly alive, one almost feels envious of those who reside there. Similarly, the tenacity of slum-dwellers in confronting adversity is often breathtaking. Then again, on the other hand, the brutal exploitation of the poor by people only slightly more advantaged is a disheartening commentary on the human race.

Overall, this is quite a tale. Robert Neuwirth's book is a great read and well worth the time and the price.

Customer Review: 2 out of 5
A Haphazard Letdown - This rather haphazard book functions well as a sociological portrait of four squatter cities as well as a spirited PR piece for the people living there, but fails on other fronts. The best parts are the first four chapters, which outline Neuwirth's field work in the shantytowns of Rio, Nairobi, Mumbai, and Istanbul. This consisted of living in situ for several months and talking to as many people as possible in order to get the pulse of a place. These 150 pages are fairly engaging insider views of places few of us are likely to venture, and are worth reading as a kind of non-traditional travelogue.

The book really loses its way after this. There is a meandering chapter about urban squatting throughout time, including snippets on ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Victorian London, '20s Shanghai, and various cities in the U.S. This is followed by another meandering chapter about squatters in New York over the last 150 years. Both of these contains some interesting stories and factoids, but fail to cohere into anything more than that. Next is a brief, rather snide chapter skewering the efforts of the NGO Habitat, which takes the rather predictable line that well-intentioned aid from outsiders accomplishes nothing. Then a chapter addressing crime in the four communities he lived in -- why this needs to be broken out into it's own chapter is unclear. Next is a rather muddled chapter on the concept of "property" and the various theoretical tugs-of-war surrounding it, which feels quite like the obligatory "theory" chapter of a Master's thesis.

A rather significant flaw running through the book is that Neuwirth writes as if his readers all hold some kind of ridiculous stereotype about who lives in shantytowns. Few readers are likely to believe that millions of shantytown-dwellers around the world are simply lazy and/or criminal -- yet the writing is rather shrilly pitched as if the reader was some kind of reactionary nincompoop. His profiles in courage of ingenious hard-working and optimistic poor (and a few who aren't so poor) shantytowners are welcome, but get rather repetitive. Furthermore, while these profiles are certainly heart-warming, they are ultimately little more than anecdotal data. They are also ironically similar to the sustaining American capitalist myths of "rugged individualism" and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." However, the reality is that the vast majority of the people living in the communities he passed through are going to be born poor, live poor, and die poor -- regardless of how hard they work or how ingenious they are.

The book's larger aims fail because Neuwirth tries to uncouple housing issues from broader issues of poverty when the reality is that the one is embedded deeply in the other. Shantytowns have exploded around the world thanks to rural-to-urban migration patterns driven by global capitalism. In his book The Mystery of Capital, Hernan de Soto addresses this larger problem quite specifically and offers a possible way forward (within a traditional capitalism framework). Unfortunately, Neuwirth seems to have not quite grasped de Soto's ideas, and instead offers only sneering potshots at only portions of them. This problem with his dubious analysis is that by singling out specific elements of de Soto's proposal (notably property titles) from his larger framework (which includes addressing corruption, elitism, stagnant bureaucracies and a great many other things), the critique has no meaning. It's especially disappointing because de Soto and Neuwirth are both on the side of squatters, and both want better lives for them. One of the underlying themes of de Soto's book is that when citizens create facts on the ground, their government should change its methods to accommodate them, not isolate them.

Ultimately, this is a rather disappointing work with some genuine bright spots. It's great that Neuwirth went and spent a year of his life in these communities, and he's good at capturing the flavor of them. It's just a shame that his broader analysis is so flighty. There is an running underlying tension whereby Neuwirth provides case after case of how squatters get taken advantage of because they have no legal protections, and yet he refuses to admit that valid, enforceable property titles are part of the solution to exactly these inequities. In any event, worth a quick read by those with a deep interest in the subject, but on the whole it's a letdown.

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