Planet of Slums

The classic, brilliant, bestselling account of the rise of the world's slums, where, according to the United Nations, one billion people now live.



From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unfores...