A must for new UK entry graduates, 21 Sep 2007
This is an excellent source of UK Planning Law and Practice for, in particular, overseas students who have no prior knowledge of the UK Planning system. This applies to those from countries like New Zealand and australia who have their planning systems originating from the UK, as the UK has its own distinctive system unlike the land use zoning patterns of New Zealand the US.

It is quite a substantial book however all chapters are useful and cover subjcts from Development Control to Urban Regeneration. It is a must-read before you arrive in the UK or begin practice.

A must for new UK entry graduates, 21 Sep 2007
This is an excellent source of UK Planning Law and Practice for, in particular, overseas students who have no prior knowledge of the UK Planning system. This applies to those from countries like New Zealand and australia who have their planning systems originating from the UK, as the UK has its own distinctive system unlike the land use zoning patterns of New Zealand the US.

It is quite a substantial book however all chapters are useful and cover subjcts from Development Control to Urban Regeneration. It is a must-read before you arrive in the UK or begin practice.

The story of a life, 22 Mar 2008
Both of the concept of council housing and the author's own. Keenly felt, written with absolute conviction, this is compelling stuff. Lynsey Hanley had clearly been waiting all of her brief life in order to commit this to print. Unmissable.

Not as good as the other reviewers suggest, 18 Mar 2008
This book doesn't quite work. It seeks to be a personal memoir and an account of public housing policies but falls short in both. For example, while there are references to the author's childhood, these are fleeting and not all that interesting or personal. And, while there is some information on Government housing policy, this is unoriginal and relies too much on a few sources (such as Anne Power's work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Another annoyance is that in various places the author condemns people who look askance at people who live on estates and then does exactly the same herself - the section on shellsuits near the end is a perfect example of this. The author is also deeply confused about various things - especially the aims of national politicians, which are caricatured mercilessly but apparently unintentionally. On page 171, she writes, 'I like to think I know what I'm talking about.' This sums up the book perfectly - slightly arrogant and not as good as it thinks it is.

Excellent and refreshing, 28 Feb 2008
Lynsey Hanley has written a refreshingly personal and honest book in "Estates", which is partly a history of social housing in the UK and partly a personal account of her own upbringing on one of Birmingham's big estates.

The two sides of the story Hanley tells are meshed together beautifully, feeding into her central theme of how difficult it is to escape the "walls of the mind" that keep so many people trapped in these places.

She is quite warm and almost nostalgic in the descriptions of her home estate, less so about the sadly typical dump school which she and the other local kids were forced to attend, where a general air of hopelessness was allowed to pervade the atmosphere.

She's now even less complimentary about the estate in East London that she has rather ironically found herself marooned in, as a homeowner in a decaying environment trapped in a long and tortuous decision making process - to demolish or not to demolish.

The author is entirely open and honest about the inherent contradictions in her views and personal position, which could so easily have left her open to unfair charges of hypocrisy.

Excellently written, intelligent, and indeed optimistic in many ways, this is an outstanding work and I look forward to whatever Lynsey writes next.

Good but assumes readers are socialists, 31 Jan 2008

This was a good book to read, and it gives a great analysis of housing policy and conditions over the past 100 years in Britain. The author uses some good case studies, including the Wood estate which she grew up on near Birmingham.

One word of caution. The author is quite subjective when it comes to putting forward her own view on who could qualify for publically funded housing, and what type of housing this should be. She rightly points out that the main beneficiaries of council housing these days are the "undeserving poor", and I agree that this is unfortunate. However, the author seems to think that a house with a garden is a right of everyone. I'm not so sure about that.

Everyone Should Read this Book, 26 Jan 2008
I was expecting not to like this book! The title unfortunately lends itself to pre-conception and prejudice. Ironically, it is this very type of preconception which the book cleverly highlights as the major problem associated with council housing.

The first - person, tabloid style initially annoyed suggesting that I was in for a standard diatribe on a greedy, corrupt capitalistic dynamic responsible for destroying a worthy working class dynamic. I was wrong. The book is balanced and an excellent analysis of the problems of social housing. The first and last chapters particularly discuss the stigma and perceived low status associated with council housing; right from its inception following the Great War through to today where renting in the private sector is quite acceptable whilst renting from the council is not.

The book gives an interesting account of the history of housing and highlights the despairs and post-war imperatives to build. I particularly liked Chapter 4 Der Mauer im Kopf where it cleverly conjoins the idea of isolation and despair of former GDR with the isolation of today's council tenants, responsible for the lack of impetus of their inmates. The book is well documented with housing statistics, historical trends in numbers, which are very revealing. The problems of council housing are complex. They have changed over the years, but are still very much present. Problems, as elsewhere, have been exacerbated since the common use of drugs. The book does not offer a single solution, rather suggesting a need for the actual awareness of the problem, more communications between tenants and housing association and essentially proper expenditure and maintenance on the care of the buildings -and even, in some areas, rebuilding again.


In summary, this was an excellent read which I think this will become a socially important and referenced book. In deals with greed, the class system and unfortunately highlights the growing financial and opportunistic inequalities in our society today. More importantly it raises the view that some sections of society might always be destined to be `council house tenants'. Everyone should read this book!

PS: On a personal note, I was moved with my elder sister from a inner city slum to a large, new east- Birmingham council estate in 1952. The model was different then, being in many ways a `transit base' due to the appalling shortage of post-war housing. Many like my parents never moved out, essentially because they were a product of the rigid and awful social class system - `people like us', my mother said, `don't go to university'. She was of course wrong. Der Mauer im Kopf was endemic then, but the advantage we had as children was the means of outside access and thus awareness of our social position and status. My own `conversion' was listening to the BBC with its RP - a stark contrast to our flat Birmingham accents. Equally, the advantage of the grammar schools was that they were outside the estate. They provided that vital contact with people of different socio-economic backgrounds and gave those essential contacts and aspirations that the book suggests are vital for escape.

A must for new UK entry graduates, 21 Sep 2007
This is an excellent source of UK Planning Law and Practice for, in particular, overseas students who have no prior knowledge of the UK Planning system. This applies to those from countries like New Zealand and australia who have their planning systems originating from the UK, as the UK has its own distinctive system unlike the land use zoning patterns of New Zealand the US.

It is quite a substantial book however all chapters are useful and cover subjcts from Development Control to Urban Regeneration. It is a must-read before you arrive in the UK or begin practice.

The story of a life, 22 Mar 2008
Both of the concept of council housing and the author's own. Keenly felt, written with absolute conviction, this is compelling stuff. Lynsey Hanley had clearly been waiting all of her brief life in order to commit this to print. Unmissable.

Not as good as the other reviewers suggest, 18 Mar 2008
This book doesn't quite work. It seeks to be a personal memoir and an account of public housing policies but falls short in both. For example, while there are references to the author's childhood, these are fleeting and not all that interesting or personal. And, while there is some information on Government housing policy, this is unoriginal and relies too much on a few sources (such as Anne Power's work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Another annoyance is that in various places the author condemns people who look askance at people who live on estates and then does exactly the same herself - the section on shellsuits near the end is a perfect example of this. The author is also deeply confused about various things - especially the aims of national politicians, which are caricatured mercilessly but apparently unintentionally. On page 171, she writes, 'I like to think I know what I'm talking about.' This sums up the book perfectly - slightly arrogant and not as good as it thinks it is.

Excellent and refreshing, 28 Feb 2008
Lynsey Hanley has written a refreshingly personal and honest book in "Estates", which is partly a history of social housing in the UK and partly a personal account of her own upbringing on one of Birmingham's big estates.

The two sides of the story Hanley tells are meshed together beautifully, feeding into her central theme of how difficult it is to escape the "walls of the mind" that keep so many people trapped in these places.

She is quite warm and almost nostalgic in the descriptions of her home estate, less so about the sadly typical dump school which she and the other local kids were forced to attend, where a general air of hopelessness was allowed to pervade the atmosphere.

She's now even less complimentary about the estate in East London that she has rather ironically found herself marooned in, as a homeowner in a decaying environment trapped in a long and tortuous decision making process - to demolish or not to demolish.

The author is entirely open and honest about the inherent contradictions in her views and personal position, which could so easily have left her open to unfair charges of hypocrisy.

Excellently written, intelligent, and indeed optimistic in many ways, this is an outstanding work and I look forward to whatever Lynsey writes next.

Good but assumes readers are socialists, 31 Jan 2008

This was a good book to read, and it gives a great analysis of housing policy and conditions over the past 100 years in Britain. The author uses some good case studies, including the Wood estate which she grew up on near Birmingham.

One word of caution. The author is quite subjective when it comes to putting forward her own view on who could qualify for publically funded housing, and what type of housing this should be. She rightly points out that the main beneficiaries of council housing these days are the "undeserving poor", and I agree that this is unfortunate. However, the author seems to think that a house with a garden is a right of everyone. I'm not so sure about that.

Everyone Should Read this Book, 26 Jan 2008
I was expecting not to like this book! The title unfortunately lends itself to pre-conception and prejudice. Ironically, it is this very type of preconception which the book cleverly highlights as the major problem associated with council housing.

The first - person, tabloid style initially annoyed suggesting that I was in for a standard diatribe on a greedy, corrupt capitalistic dynamic responsible for destroying a worthy working class dynamic. I was wrong. The book is balanced and an excellent analysis of the problems of social housing. The first and last chapters particularly discuss the stigma and perceived low status associated with council housing; right from its inception following the Great War through to today where renting in the private sector is quite acceptable whilst renting from the council is not.

The book gives an interesting account of the history of housing and highlights the despairs and post-war imperatives to build. I particularly liked Chapter 4 Der Mauer im Kopf where it cleverly conjoins the idea of isolation and despair of former GDR with the isolation of today's council tenants, responsible for the lack of impetus of their inmates. The book is well documented with housing statistics, historical trends in numbers, which are very revealing. The problems of council housing are complex. They have changed over the years, but are still very much present. Problems, as elsewhere, have been exacerbated since the common use of drugs. The book does not offer a single solution, rather suggesting a need for the actual awareness of the problem, more communications between tenants and housing association and essentially proper expenditure and maintenance on the care of the buildings -and even, in some areas, rebuilding again.


In summary, this was an excellent read which I think this will become a socially important and referenced book. In deals with greed, the class system and unfortunately highlights the growing financial and opportunistic inequalities in our society today. More importantly it raises the view that some sections of society might always be destined to be `council house tenants'. Everyone should read this book!

PS: On a personal note, I was moved with my elder sister from a inner city slum to a large, new east- Birmingham council estate in 1952. The model was different then, being in many ways a `transit base' due to the appalling shortage of post-war housing. Many like my parents never moved out, essentially because they were a product of the rigid and awful social class system - `people like us', my mother said, `don't go to university'. She was of course wrong. Der Mauer im Kopf was endemic then, but the advantage we had as children was the means of outside access and thus awareness of our social position and status. My own `conversion' was listening to the BBC with its RP - a stark contrast to our flat Birmingham accents. Equally, the advantage of the grammar schools was that they were outside the estate. They provided that vital contact with people of different socio-economic backgrounds and gave those essential contacts and aspirations that the book suggests are vital for escape.




slum mega cities, 11 Jun 2007
The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis's book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds.

Thorough Description with No Prescription, 14 Feb 2007
Marxist cultural critic Davis's latest book tackles the global problem of the slums (he uses the U.N. definition: "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure."), which are exploding at a geometric rate across the world. Alas, at the end of this relatively brief work, we have learned of the scale and scope of the problem in mind-numbing detail, and we have learned the source of the problem (at least according to Davis), but that's about it. Alas, anyone interested in a book with this title probably already has a sense of both, and what is utterly lacking in Davis's analysis is any way forward.

Granted, if there were obvious solutions, we'd probably know about those as well -- the real problem is that Davis really, really likes to have it both ways. In other words, there since there is no policy or proposed solution he likes, he attacks all options, even opposite ones, with equal venom, leading one to wonder what the point is. For example: at one point he says that new "periurban" slums lack the community spirit of the inner-city slums people are being relocated from, but then elsewhere he says that this positive community spirit is all a myth and that all slums are Darwinian proving grounds. Governments that don't build public housing come under attack, and those that do also come under attack for it being substandard. Slums are depicted as terrible, and slum clearances are depicted as equally terrible. Sure, none of this is "good", in any sense of the word, but Davis doesn't have anything else to offer either. Most egregious to me is his flailing around on property rights: if the poor don't have titles to their land then they're subject to exploitation, if they do have title they'll just sell it and be exploited. Meanwhile he characterizes Hernando de Soto's interesting vision of how property rights might be used to lift people out of poverty (as detailed in The Mystery of Capital) as a "cargo cult" and "magic wand", which is a disappointingly cynical oversimplification of a rather nuanced and wide-ranging proposal (which is grounded in actual fieldwork instead of the library).

This book is certainly valuable for its description of the problem of slums -- it uses about 700 footnotes (yes, really!) citing an impressive array of books, articles, newsletters, and various published and unpublished reports by the World Bank, UN, governments, and NGOs to draw connections between slums from around the world. Davis paints a picture of slums that are created not by those coming to the city to earn more money, but by the involuntary relocation of those in the way of construction that benefits the wealthy, or the loss of farming at the hands of multinational agribusiness, or civil war, or drought. Of course, all the usual suspects come in for indictment as well (the UN, World Bank, IMF neoliberal capitalism), along with NGOs, the leaders of the third world, the elite of the third world, the middle-class of the third world, and at some points, the poor of the third world. In this book, everyone is guilty (and maybe everybody is, certainly the World Bank and IMF have a terrible track record and are indeed very culpable), but how does this view help anyone? Even worse, nothing we're trying works according to Davis: not micro-credit, not outside NGO help, not militant activism by squatters, and not even the self-help entrepreneurship of the poor.

Some have inferred that Davis is inherently suggesting a reversal of the policies that brought this miserable state to pass, and that massive public spending might be the answer. The problem Davis points out himself is that many of these policies are interwoven with global capitalism, so it's not a simple matter of passing some new resolution. Nor does Davis care for massive public spending (at least not in China or India), and since he points out over and over that third-world elites will simply steal their nation's wealth, the notion that some form of worldwide nationalization of natural resources doesn't seem particularly promising either. Given all this, one has to presume that Davis's unarticulated "solution" is that one day the revolution's gonna come and tear this mother (ie. global capitalism) down. Or maybe that's not what he thinks... we don't know, because Davis never tells us.

Provocative and vital, 06 Dec 2006
This stunning book compels the reader to a new view of the world. A "Planet of Slums" is pretty scary from a moral point of view. What kind of creatures are we to allow such an enormous number of our kind to live out their lives in squalor and poverty? What does this say for the soul of humanity?

From a national security point of view, of course we are not directly threatened, at least not yet. The percent of urbanites in our cities that are slum dwellers, according to a table on page 24 is 5.8 for a total of a "mere" 12.8 million people. Compare that to China's 37.8% (193.8 million) and India's 55.5% (158.4 million) and we are in relatively good shape. The worst country is Ethiopia with 99.4% of the city population living in slums, followed by the Sudan (85.7%) and Bangladesh (84.7%). I did a quick count of the number of people living in slums in the 20 countries listed on the table and it added up to maybe 700 million. Should we worry?

Davis reveals that the Pentagon and think tank thinkers are worried since the cost of dealing with disruptive mobs, slum-bred terrorists, criminal gangs, etc. not only will be high but will require new tactics and strategies. In a sense, some of the problems we are having in Baghdad are the result of our inability to deal with the people of the great slum of Sadr City. I say this somewhat tongue in cheek since of course our "problem" in Iraq goes well beyond slum dissidents.

On the other hand, we might ask, whose fault is it that so many people in the world are locked into such squalid conditions? Certainly you and I had nothing to do with it. Well, that is NOT Davis's point of view. He sees globalization and the policies of governments (especially rich Western governments) and NGOs (especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) as the leading cause of slum proliferation and growth. He writes, "night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side." (p. 206)

This vision, which ends the book, comes from the Epilogue, "Down Vietnam Street." "Vietnam Street" is what the "unemployed teenage fighters of the 'Mahdi Army' in Baghdad's Sadr City...taunt American occupiers with," the implication being that the same failure we experienced in Vietnam is what awaits us in Iraq. (p. 205)

Could this be America a couple of generations down the road? The massive growth of slums in our inner cities in my lifetime as been staggering, even though it is not much compared to places like Mexico City, Mumbai, Cairo, Shanghai, etc. One of the differences between the typical American slum and that of many cities throughout the world is that American slums are of the inner city variety while the others are mostly "peripheral slums." Peripheral slums are worse at least in one sense: the poor not only live in filth without basic services, but they have to commute long distances to their jobs. This is something of an irony since the growth of slums is usually equated with their close proximity to low paying jobs.

Davis gives the official UN definition of a slum as a place "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure." (pp. 22-23) Clearly from a demographic viewpoint slums are occupied by poor people and poor people have little power, and that is one of the reasons they stay poor. Davis writes as someone who is on the side of the poor and an advocate for doing something about the eternal phenomenon expressed as "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

The people in the slums, as Davis points out, represent surplus labor or even--to use his terminology--superfluous labor. They are the dregs of humanity, caught in a downward spiraling situation in which lack of education, lack of nutrition, high instance of disease and mortality, low wages, bare subsistence, etc. guarantee that they and their children will stay in the same situation. The odds against a leap from the depths of poverty to a middle class existence are greater than ever.

At least that is the message I got from reading this sobering book. By the way, this is the sort of book that is a bit difficult to read because it is so jammed full of facts, figures and jargon terminology. Additionally Davis uses a lot of foreign words that he doesn't define (as though to show the reader that he's been there with the natives), although many of them are self-explanatory. I like the native terminology however and the use of the local names of slums within the larger city.

The overarching question that I was left with was, what does this incredible proliferation of poverty mean for the human race as a whole? What does it say about us? How does it bode for the future? Are we looking at not a perpetual war between nation states (as Orwell had it), but at a perpetual war between the haves and the have nots? It used to be the case that when things got really bad or just incredibly decadent, a revolution or an invasion from without would change things. Now it would appear that the difference between those at the bottom of the economic pyramid and those in the middle and upper classes will only widen. With the exponential explosion in technology that gap may become so great that the haves may someday regard the have nots as member of a different species.

Relentless, nihilistic, compelling, 17 Sep 2006
Mike Davis turns his sights away from Los Angeles and towards the phenomenon of global slums, and starts shooting away with his trademark machine gun prose style, a rat-a-tat-tat staccato of globalized urban poverty, misery, and exploitation, backed up with plenty of reading and research, but no first hand experience.

Davis' doomsaying Marxist critique of Structural Adjustment Programs, government housing reforms and micro-economic self-help is relentless, but ultimately nihilistic - nothing works, the population of an urban poor underclass is growing, and things are getting worse. There are no solutions offered in the book, not even glimpses into possibilities, small scale case studies or broad brush strokes to start a debate. It's powerful stuff, but it must be hard being Mike Davis.

A must for new UK entry graduates, 21 Sep 2007
This is an excellent source of UK Planning Law and Practice for, in particular, overseas students who have no prior knowledge of the UK Planning system. This applies to those from countries like New Zealand and australia who have their planning systems originating from the UK, as the UK has its own distinctive system unlike the land use zoning patterns of New Zealand the US.

It is quite a substantial book however all chapters are useful and cover subjcts from Development Control to Urban Regeneration. It is a must-read before you arrive in the UK or begin practice.

The story of a life, 22 Mar 2008
Both of the concept of council housing and the author's own. Keenly felt, written with absolute conviction, this is compelling stuff. Lynsey Hanley had clearly been waiting all of her brief life in order to commit this to print. Unmissable.

Not as good as the other reviewers suggest, 18 Mar 2008
This book doesn't quite work. It seeks to be a personal memoir and an account of public housing policies but falls short in both. For example, while there are references to the author's childhood, these are fleeting and not all that interesting or personal. And, while there is some information on Government housing policy, this is unoriginal and relies too much on a few sources (such as Anne Power's work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Another annoyance is that in various places the author condemns people who look askance at people who live on estates and then does exactly the same herself - the section on shellsuits near the end is a perfect example of this. The author is also deeply confused about various things - especially the aims of national politicians, which are caricatured mercilessly but apparently unintentionally. On page 171, she writes, 'I like to think I know what I'm talking about.' This sums up the book perfectly - slightly arrogant and not as good as it thinks it is.

Excellent and refreshing, 28 Feb 2008
Lynsey Hanley has written a refreshingly personal and honest book in "Estates", which is partly a history of social housing in the UK and partly a personal account of her own upbringing on one of Birmingham's big estates.

The two sides of the story Hanley tells are meshed together beautifully, feeding into her central theme of how difficult it is to escape the "walls of the mind" that keep so many people trapped in these places.

She is quite warm and almost nostalgic in the descriptions of her home estate, less so about the sadly typical dump school which she and the other local kids were forced to attend, where a general air of hopelessness was allowed to pervade the atmosphere.

She's now even less complimentary about the estate in East London that she has rather ironically found herself marooned in, as a homeowner in a decaying environment trapped in a long and tortuous decision making process - to demolish or not to demolish.

The author is entirely open and honest about the inherent contradictions in her views and personal position, which could so easily have left her open to unfair charges of hypocrisy.

Excellently written, intelligent, and indeed optimistic in many ways, this is an outstanding work and I look forward to whatever Lynsey writes next.

Good but assumes readers are socialists, 31 Jan 2008

This was a good book to read, and it gives a great analysis of housing policy and conditions over the past 100 years in Britain. The author uses some good case studies, including the Wood estate which she grew up on near Birmingham.

One word of caution. The author is quite subjective when it comes to putting forward her own view on who could qualify for publically funded housing, and what type of housing this should be. She rightly points out that the main beneficiaries of council housing these days are the "undeserving poor", and I agree that this is unfortunate. However, the author seems to think that a house with a garden is a right of everyone. I'm not so sure about that.

Everyone Should Read this Book, 26 Jan 2008
I was expecting not to like this book! The title unfortunately lends itself to pre-conception and prejudice. Ironically, it is this very type of preconception which the book cleverly highlights as the major problem associated with council housing.

The first - person, tabloid style initially annoyed suggesting that I was in for a standard diatribe on a greedy, corrupt capitalistic dynamic responsible for destroying a worthy working class dynamic. I was wrong. The book is balanced and an excellent analysis of the problems of social housing. The first and last chapters particularly discuss the stigma and perceived low status associated with council housing; right from its inception following the Great War through to today where renting in the private sector is quite acceptable whilst renting from the council is not.

The book gives an interesting account of the history of housing and highlights the despairs and post-war imperatives to build. I particularly liked Chapter 4 Der Mauer im Kopf where it cleverly conjoins the idea of isolation and despair of former GDR with the isolation of today's council tenants, responsible for the lack of impetus of their inmates. The book is well documented with housing statistics, historical trends in numbers, which are very revealing. The problems of council housing are complex. They have changed over the years, but are still very much present. Problems, as elsewhere, have been exacerbated since the common use of drugs. The book does not offer a single solution, rather suggesting a need for the actual awareness of the problem, more communications between tenants and housing association and essentially proper expenditure and maintenance on the care of the buildings -and even, in some areas, rebuilding again.


In summary, this was an excellent read which I think this will become a socially important and referenced book. In deals with greed, the class system and unfortunately highlights the growing financial and opportunistic inequalities in our society today. More importantly it raises the view that some sections of society might always be destined to be `council house tenants'. Everyone should read this book!

PS: On a personal note, I was moved with my elder sister from a inner city slum to a large, new east- Birmingham council estate in 1952. The model was different then, being in many ways a `transit base' due to the appalling shortage of post-war housing. Many like my parents never moved out, essentially because they were a product of the rigid and awful social class system - `people like us', my mother said, `don't go to university'. She was of course wrong. Der Mauer im Kopf was endemic then, but the advantage we had as children was the means of outside access and thus awareness of our social position and status. My own `conversion' was listening to the BBC with its RP - a stark contrast to our flat Birmingham accents. Equally, the advantage of the grammar schools was that they were outside the estate. They provided that vital contact with people of different socio-economic backgrounds and gave those essential contacts and aspirations that the book suggests are vital for escape.




slum mega cities, 11 Jun 2007
The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis's book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds.

Thorough Description with No Prescription, 14 Feb 2007
Marxist cultural critic Davis's latest book tackles the global problem of the slums (he uses the U.N. definition: "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure."), which are exploding at a geometric rate across the world. Alas, at the end of this relatively brief work, we have learned of the scale and scope of the problem in mind-numbing detail, and we have learned the source of the problem (at least according to Davis), but that's about it. Alas, anyone interested in a book with this title probably already has a sense of both, and what is utterly lacking in Davis's analysis is any way forward.

Granted, if there were obvious solutions, we'd probably know about those as well -- the real problem is that Davis really, really likes to have it both ways. In other words, there since there is no policy or proposed solution he likes, he attacks all options, even opposite ones, with equal venom, leading one to wonder what the point is. For example: at one point he says that new "periurban" slums lack the community spirit of the inner-city slums people are being relocated from, but then elsewhere he says that this positive community spirit is all a myth and that all slums are Darwinian proving grounds. Governments that don't build public housing come under attack, and those that do also come under attack for it being substandard. Slums are depicted as terrible, and slum clearances are depicted as equally terrible. Sure, none of this is "good", in any sense of the word, but Davis doesn't have anything else to offer either. Most egregious to me is his flailing around on property rights: if the poor don't have titles to their land then they're subject to exploitation, if they do have title they'll just sell it and be exploited. Meanwhile he characterizes Hernando de Soto's interesting vision of how property rights might be used to lift people out of poverty (as detailed in The Mystery of Capital) as a "cargo cult" and "magic wand", which is a disappointingly cynical oversimplification of a rather nuanced and wide-ranging proposal (which is grounded in actual fieldwork instead of the library).

This book is certainly valuable for its description of the problem of slums -- it uses about 700 footnotes (yes, really!) citing an impressive array of books, articles, newsletters, and various published and unpublished reports by the World Bank, UN, governments, and NGOs to draw connections between slums from around the world. Davis paints a picture of slums that are created not by those coming to the city to earn more money, but by the involuntary relocation of those in the way of construction that benefits the wealthy, or the loss of farming at the hands of multinational agribusiness, or civil war, or drought. Of course, all the usual suspects come in for indictment as well (the UN, World Bank, IMF neoliberal capitalism), along with NGOs, the leaders of the third world, the elite of the third world, the middle-class of the third world, and at some points, the poor of the third world. In this book, everyone is guilty (and maybe everybody is, certainly the World Bank and IMF have a terrible track record and are indeed very culpable), but how does this view help anyone? Even worse, nothing we're trying works according to Davis: not micro-credit, not outside NGO help, not militant activism by squatters, and not even the self-help entrepreneurship of the poor.

Some have inferred that Davis is inherently suggesting a reversal of the policies that brought this miserable state to pass, and that massive public spending might be the answer. The problem Davis points out himself is that many of these policies are interwoven with global capitalism, so it's not a simple matter of passing some new resolution. Nor does Davis care for massive public spending (at least not in China or India), and since he points out over and over that third-world elites will simply steal their nation's wealth, the notion that some form of worldwide nationalization of natural resources doesn't seem particularly promising either. Given all this, one has to presume that Davis's unarticulated "solution" is that one day the revolution's gonna come and tear this mother (ie. global capitalism) down. Or maybe that's not what he thinks... we don't know, because Davis never tells us.

Provocative and vital, 06 Dec 2006
This stunning book compels the reader to a new view of the world. A "Planet of Slums" is pretty scary from a moral point of view. What kind of creatures are we to allow such an enormous number of our kind to live out their lives in squalor and poverty? What does this say for the soul of humanity?

From a national security point of view, of course we are not directly threatened, at least not yet. The percent of urbanites in our cities that are slum dwellers, according to a table on page 24 is 5.8 for a total of a "mere" 12.8 million people. Compare that to China's 37.8% (193.8 million) and India's 55.5% (158.4 million) and we are in relatively good shape. The worst country is Ethiopia with 99.4% of the city population living in slums, followed by the Sudan (85.7%) and Bangladesh (84.7%). I did a quick count of the number of people living in slums in the 20 countries listed on the table and it added up to maybe 700 million. Should we worry?

Davis reveals that the Pentagon and think tank thinkers are worried since the cost of dealing with disruptive mobs, slum-bred terrorists, criminal gangs, etc. not only will be high but will require new tactics and strategies. In a sense, some of the problems we are having in Baghdad are the result of our inability to deal with the people of the great slum of Sadr City. I say this somewhat tongue in cheek since of course our "problem" in Iraq goes well beyond slum dissidents.

On the other hand, we might ask, whose fault is it that so many people in the world are locked into such squalid conditions? Certainly you and I had nothing to do with it. Well, that is NOT Davis's point of view. He sees globalization and the policies of governments (especially rich Western governments) and NGOs (especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) as the leading cause of slum proliferation and growth. He writes, "night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side." (p. 206)

This vision, which ends the book, comes from the Epilogue, "Down Vietnam Street." "Vietnam Street" is what the "unemployed teenage fighters of the 'Mahdi Army' in Baghdad's Sadr City...taunt American occupiers with," the implication being that the same failure we experienced in Vietnam is what awaits us in Iraq. (p. 205)

Could this be America a couple of generations down the road? The massive growth of slums in our inner cities in my lifetime as been staggering, even though it is not much compared to places like Mexico City, Mumbai, Cairo, Shanghai, etc. One of the differences between the typical American slum and that of many cities throughout the world is that American slums are of the inner city variety while the others are mostly "peripheral slums." Peripheral slums are worse at least in one sense: the poor not only live in filth without basic services, but they have to commute long distances to their jobs. This is something of an irony since the growth of slums is usually equated with their close proximity to low paying jobs.

Davis gives the official UN definition of a slum as a place "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure." (pp. 22-23) Clearly from a demographic viewpoint slums are occupied by poor people and poor people have little power, and that is one of the reasons they stay poor. Davis writes as someone who is on the side of the poor and an advocate for doing something about the eternal phenomenon expressed as "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

The people in the slums, as Davis points out, represent surplus labor or even--to use his terminology--superfluous labor. They are the dregs of humanity, caught in a downward spiraling situation in which lack of education, lack of nutrition, high instance of disease and mortality, low wages, bare subsistence, etc. guarantee that they and their children will stay in the same situation. The odds against a leap from the depths of poverty to a middle class existence are greater than ever.

At least that is the message I got from reading this sobering book. By the way, this is the sort of book that is a bit difficult to read because it is so jammed full of facts, figures and jargon terminology. Additionally Davis uses a lot of foreign words that he doesn't define (as though to show the reader that he's been there with the natives), although many of them are self-explanatory. I like the native terminology however and the use of the local names of slums within the larger city.

The overarching question that I was left with was, what does this incredible proliferation of poverty mean for the human race as a whole? What does it say about us? How does it bode for the future? Are we looking at not a perpetual war between nation states (as Orwell had it), but at a perpetual war between the haves and the have nots? It used to be the case that when things got really bad or just incredibly decadent, a revolution or an invasion from without would change things. Now it would appear that the difference between those at the bottom of the economic pyramid and those in the middle and upper classes will only widen. With the exponential explosion in technology that gap may become so great that the haves may someday regard the have nots as member of a different species.

Relentless, nihilistic, compelling, 17 Sep 2006
Mike Davis turns his sights away from Los Angeles and towards the phenomenon of global slums, and starts shooting away with his trademark machine gun prose style, a rat-a-tat-tat staccato of globalized urban poverty, misery, and exploitation, backed up with plenty of reading and research, but no first hand experience.

Davis' doomsaying Marxist critique of Structural Adjustment Programs, government housing reforms and micro-economic self-help is relentless, but ultimately nihilistic - nothing works, the population of an urban poor underclass is growing, and things are getting worse. There are no solutions offered in the book, not even glimpses into possibilities, small scale case studies or broad brush strokes to start a debate. It's powerful stuff, but it must be hard being Mike Davis.

Be careful of wrongly numbered Sections, 16 Jun 2008
Overall this is a pretty good book, just as the other reviewers have said. But, and it's a big but, a few of the critical Section numbers are wrong - such as 38(6), which Moore gives as 37(6). Make sure to double check before you throw them in an essay.

Excellent, 18 Oct 2004
A very good summary of statute and case law in planning. I bought it for my Planning Masters Degree and am still using it as a development control officer. Clear and easy to read.

Practical handbook for English planning law/procedure, 10 Jun 2002
A wealth of expertise takes the reader through a well organised summary of English town and country planning law, up to date at April 2000. Chapter headings include Environmental Impact Assessment, appeals and judicial review, listed buildings and much more besides. A vast array of case law illustrates the points. This subject is complex, the book a true vade mecum.

A must for new UK entry graduates, 21 Sep 2007
This is an excellent source of UK Planning Law and Practice for, in particular, overseas students who have no prior knowledge of the UK Planning system. This applies to those from countries like New Zealand and australia who have their planning systems originating from the UK, as the UK has its own distinctive system unlike the land use zoning patterns of New Zealand the US.

It is quite a substantial book however all chapters are useful and cover subjcts from Development Control to Urban Regeneration. It is a must-read before you arrive in the UK or begin practice.

The story of a life, 22 Mar 2008
Both of the concept of council housing and the author's own. Keenly felt, written with absolute conviction, this is compelling stuff. Lynsey Hanley had clearly been waiting all of her brief life in order to commit this to print. Unmissable.

Not as good as the other reviewers suggest, 18 Mar 2008
This book doesn't quite work. It seeks to be a personal memoir and an account of public housing policies but falls short in both. For example, while there are references to the author's childhood, these are fleeting and not all that interesting or personal. And, while there is some information on Government housing policy, this is unoriginal and relies too much on a few sources (such as Anne Power's work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Another annoyance is that in various places the author condemns people who look askance at people who live on estates and then does exactly the same herself - the section on shellsuits near the end is a perfect example of this. The author is also deeply confused about various things - especially the aims of national politicians, which are caricatured mercilessly but apparently unintentionally. On page 171, she writes, 'I like to think I know what I'm talking about.' This sums up the book perfectly - slightly arrogant and not as good as it thinks it is.

Excellent and refreshing, 28 Feb 2008
Lynsey Hanley has written a refreshingly personal and honest book in "Estates", which is partly a history of social housing in the UK and partly a personal account of her own upbringing on one of Birmingham's big estates.

The two sides of the story Hanley tells are meshed together beautifully, feeding into her central theme of how difficult it is to escape the "walls of the mind" that keep so many people trapped in these places.

She is quite warm and almost nostalgic in the descriptions of her home estate, less so about the sadly typical dump school which she and the other local kids were forced to attend, where a general air of hopelessness was allowed to pervade the atmosphere.

She's now even less complimentary about the estate in East London that she has rather ironically found herself marooned in, as a homeowner in a decaying environment trapped in a long and tortuous decision making process - to demolish or not to demolish.

The author is entirely open and honest about the inherent contradictions in her views and personal position, which could so easily have left her open to unfair charges of hypocrisy.

Excellently written, intelligent, and indeed optimistic in many ways, this is an outstanding work and I look forward to whatever Lynsey writes next.

Good but assumes readers are socialists, 31 Jan 2008

This was a good book to read, and it gives a great analysis of housing policy and conditions over the past 100 years in Britain. The author uses some good case studies, including the Wood estate which she grew up on near Birmingham.

One word of caution. The author is quite subjective when it comes to putting forward her own view on who could qualify for publically funded housing, and what type of housing this should be. She rightly points out that the main beneficiaries of council housing these days are the "undeserving poor", and I agree that this is unfortunate. However, the author seems to think that a house with a garden is a right of everyone. I'm not so sure about that.

Everyone Should Read this Book, 26 Jan 2008
I was expecting not to like this book! The title unfortunately lends itself to pre-conception and prejudice. Ironically, it is this very type of preconception which the book cleverly highlights as the major problem associated with council housing.

The first - person, tabloid style initially annoyed suggesting that I was in for a standard diatribe on a greedy, corrupt capitalistic dynamic responsible for destroying a worthy working class dynamic. I was wrong. The book is balanced and an excellent analysis of the problems of social housing. The first and last chapters particularly discuss the stigma and perceived low status associated with council housing; right from its inception following the Great War through to today where renting in the private sector is quite acceptable whilst renting from the council is not.

The book gives an interesting account of the history of housing and highlights the despairs and post-war imperatives to build. I particularly liked Chapter 4 Der Mauer im Kopf where it cleverly conjoins the idea of isolation and despair of former GDR with the isolation of today's council tenants, responsible for the lack of impetus of their inmates. The book is well documented with housing statistics, historical trends in numbers, which are very revealing. The problems of council housing are complex. They have changed over the years, but are still very much present. Problems, as elsewhere, have been exacerbated since the common use of drugs. The book does not offer a single solution, rather suggesting a need for the actual awareness of the problem, more communications between tenants and housing association and essentially proper expenditure and maintenance on the care of the buildings -and even, in some areas, rebuilding again.


In summary, this was an excellent read which I think this will become a socially important and referenced book. In deals with greed, the class system and unfortunately highlights the growing financial and opportunistic inequalities in our society today. More importantly it raises the view that some sections of society might always be destined to be `council house tenants'. Everyone should read this book!

PS: On a personal note, I was moved with my elder sister from a inner city slum to a large, new east- Birmingham council estate in 1952. The model was different then, being in many ways a `transit base' due to the appalling shortage of post-war housing. Many like my parents never moved out, essentially because they were a product of the rigid and awful social class system - `people like us', my mother said, `don't go to university'. She was of course wrong. Der Mauer im Kopf was endemic then, but the advantage we had as children was the means of outside access and thus awareness of our social position and status. My own `conversion' was listening to the BBC with its RP - a stark contrast to our flat Birmingham accents. Equally, the advantage of the grammar schools was that they were outside the estate. They provided that vital contact with people of different socio-economic backgrounds and gave those essential contacts and aspirations that the book suggests are vital for escape.




slum mega cities, 11 Jun 2007
The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis's book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds.

Thorough Description with No Prescription, 14 Feb 2007
Marxist cultural critic Davis's latest book tackles the global problem of the slums (he uses the U.N. definition: "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure."), which are exploding at a geometric rate across the world. Alas, at the end of this relatively brief work, we have learned of the scale and scope of the problem in mind-numbing detail, and we have learned the source of the problem (at least according to Davis), but that's about it. Alas, anyone interested in a book with this title probably already has a sense of both, and what is utterly lacking in Davis's analysis is any way forward.

Granted, if there were obvious solutions, we'd probably know about those as well -- the real problem is that Davis really, really likes to have it both ways. In other words, there since there is no policy or proposed solution he likes, he attacks all options, even opposite ones, with equal venom, leading one to wonder what the point is. For example: at one point he says that new "periurban" slums lack the community spirit of the inner-city slums people are being relocated from, but then elsewhere he says that this positive community spirit is all a myth and that all slums are Darwinian proving grounds. Governments that don't build public housing come under attack, and those that do also come under attack for it being substandard. Slums are depicted as terrible, and slum clearances are depicted as equally terrible. Sure, none of this is "good", in any sense of the word, but Davis doesn't have anything else to offer either. Most egregious to me is his flailing around on property rights: if the poor don't have titles to their land then they're subject to exploitation, if they do have title they'll just sell it and be exploited. Meanwhile he characterizes Hernando de Soto's interesting vision of how property rights might be used to lift people out of poverty (as detailed in The Mystery of Capital) as a "cargo cult" and "magic wand", which is a disappointingly cynical oversimplification of a rather nuanced and wide-ranging proposal (which is grounded in actual fieldwork instead of the library).

This book is certainly valuable for its description of the problem of slums -- it uses about 700 footnotes (yes, really!) citing an impressive array of books, articles, newsletters, and various published and unpublished reports by the World Bank, UN, governments, and NGOs to draw connections between slums from around the world. Davis paints a picture of slums that are created not by those coming to the city to earn more money, but by the involuntary relocation of those in the way of construction that benefits the wealthy, or the loss of farming at the hands of multinational agribusiness, or civil war, or drought. Of course, all the usual suspects come in for indictment as well (the UN, World Bank, IMF neoliberal capitalism), along with NGOs, the leaders of the third world, the elite of the third world, the middle-class of the third world, and at some points, the poor of the third world. In this book, everyone is guilty (and maybe everybody is, certainly the World Bank and IMF have a terrible track record and are indeed very culpable), but how does this view help anyone? Even worse, nothing we're trying works according to Davis: not micro-credit, not outside NGO help, not militant activism by squatters, and not even the self-help entrepreneurship of the poor.

Some have inferred that Davis is inherently suggesting a reversal of the policies that brought this miserable state to pass, and that massive public spending might be the answer. The problem Davis points out himself is that many of these policies are interwoven with global capitalism, so it's not a simple matter of passing some new resolution. Nor does Davis care for massive public spending (at least not in China or India), and since he points out over and over that third-world elites will simply steal their nation's wealth, the notion that some form of worldwide nationalization of natural resources doesn't seem particularly promising either. Given all this, one has to presume that Davis's unarticulated "solution" is that one day the revolution's gonna come and tear this mother (ie. global capitalism) down. Or maybe that's not what he thinks... we don't know, because Davis never tells us.

Provocative and vital, 06 Dec 2006
This stunning book compels the reader to a new view of the world. A "Planet of Slums" is pretty scary from a moral point of view. What kind of creatures are we to allow such an enormous number of our kind to live out their lives in squalor and poverty? What does this say for the soul of humanity?

From a national security point of view, of course we are not directly threatened, at least not yet. The percent of urbanites in our cities that are slum dwellers, according to a table on page 24 is 5.8 for a total of a "mere" 12.8 million people. Compare that to China's 37.8% (193.8 million) and India's 55.5% (158.4 million) and we are in relatively good shape. The worst country is Ethiopia with 99.4% of the city population living in slums, followed by the Sudan (85.7%) and Bangladesh (84.7%). I did a quick count of the number of people living in slums in the 20 countries listed on the table and it added up to maybe 700 million. Should we worry?

Davis reveals that the Pentagon and think tank thinkers are worried since the cost of dealing with disruptive mobs, slum-bred terrorists, criminal gangs, etc. not only will be high but will require new tactics and strategies. In a sense, some of the problems we are having in Baghdad are the result of our inability to deal with the people of the great slum of Sadr City. I say this somewhat tongue in cheek since of course our "problem" in Iraq goes well beyond slum dissidents.

On the other hand, we might ask, whose fault is it that so many people in the world are locked into such squalid conditions? Certainly you and I had nothing to do with it. Well, that is NOT Davis's point of view. He sees globalization and the policies of governments (especially rich Western governments) and NGOs (especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) as the leading cause of slum proliferation and growth. He writes, "night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side." (p. 206)

This vision, which ends the book, comes from the Epilogue, "Down Vietnam Street." "Vietnam Street" is what the "unemployed teenage fighters of the 'Mahdi Army' in Baghdad's Sadr City...taunt American occupiers with," the implication being that the same failure we experienced in Vietnam is what awaits us in Iraq. (p. 205)

Could this be America a couple of generations down the road? The massive growth of slums in our inner cities in my lifetime as been staggering, even though it is not much compared to places like Mexico City, Mumbai, Cairo, Shanghai, etc. One of the differences between the typical American slum and that of many cities throughout the world is that American slums are of the inner city variety while the others are mostly "peripheral slums." Peripheral slums are worse at least in one sense: the poor not only live in filth without basic services, but they have to commute long distances to their jobs. This is something of an irony since the growth of slums is usually equated with their close proximity to low paying jobs.

Davis gives the official UN definition of a slum as a place "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure." (pp. 22-23) Clearly from a demographic viewpoint slums are occupied by poor people and poor people have little power, and that is one of the reasons they stay poor. Davis writes as someone who is on the side of the poor and an advocate for doing something about the eternal phenomenon expressed as "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

The people in the slums, as Davis points out, represent surplus labor or even--to use his terminology--superfluous labor. They are the dregs of humanity, caught in a downward spiraling situation in which lack of education, lack of nutrition, high instance of disease and mortality, low wages, bare subsistence, etc. guarantee that they and their children will stay in the same situation. The odds against a leap from the depths of poverty to a middle class existence are greater than ever.

At least that is the message I got from reading this sobering book. By the way, this is the sort of book that is a bit difficult to read because it is so jammed full of facts, figures and jargon terminology. Additionally Davis uses a lot of foreign words that he doesn't define (as though to show the reader that he's been there with the natives), although many of them are self-explanatory. I like the native terminology however and the use of the local names of slums within the larger city.

The overarching question that I was left with was, what does this incredible proliferation of poverty mean for the human race as a whole? What does it say about us? How does it bode for the future? Are we looking at not a perpetual war between nation states (as Orwell had it), but at a perpetual war between the haves and the have nots? It used to be the case that when things got really bad or just incredibly decadent, a revolution or an invasion from without would change things. Now it would appear that the difference between those at the bottom of the economic pyramid and those in the middle and upper classes will only widen. With the exponential explosion in technology that gap may become so great that the haves may someday regard the have nots as member of a different species.

Relentless, nihilistic, compelling, 17 Sep 2006
Mike Davis turns his sights away from Los Angeles and towards the phenomenon of global slums, and starts shooting away with his trademark machine gun prose style, a rat-a-tat-tat staccato of globalized urban poverty, misery, and exploitation, backed up with plenty of reading and research, but no first hand experience.

Davis' doomsaying Marxist critique of Structural Adjustment Programs, government housing reforms and micro-economic self-help is relentless, but ultimately nihilistic - nothing works, the population of an urban poor underclass is growing, and things are getting worse. There are no solutions offered in the book, not even glimpses into possibilities, small scale case studies or broad brush strokes to start a debate. It's powerful stuff, but it must be hard being Mike Davis.

Be careful of wrongly numbered Sections, 16 Jun 2008
Overall this is a pretty good book, just as the other reviewers have said. But, and it's a big but, a few of the critical Section numbers are wrong - such as 38(6), which Moore gives as 37(6). Make sure to double check before you throw them in an essay.

Excellent, 18 Oct 2004
A very good summary of statute and case law in planning. I bought it for my Planning Masters Degree and am still using it as a development control officer. Clear and easy to read.

Practical handbook for English planning law/procedure, 10 Jun 2002
A wealth of expertise takes the reader through a well organised summary of English town and country planning law, up to date at April 2000. Chapter headings include Environmental Impact Assessment, appeals and judicial review, listed buildings and much more besides. A vast array of case law illustrates the points. This subject is complex, the book a true vade mecum.

Concepts of Urban Design, 18 Oct 2001
An extremely interesting book describing the way in which differing Urban Design principles have been associated to the development of urban settlements in America. Using case studies such as Boston and New Jersey, Lynch describes what is important to each areas image through the eyes of both the public and professionals. A core text for any Urban Design student!

A must for new UK entry graduates, 21 Sep 2007
This is an excellent source of UK Planning Law and Practice for, in particular, overseas students who have no prior knowledge of the UK Planning system. This applies to those from countries like New Zealand and australia who have their planning systems originating from the UK, as the UK has its own distinctive system unlike the land use zoning patterns of New Zealand the US.

It is quite a substantial book however all chapters are useful and cover subjcts from Development Control to Urban Regeneration. It is a must-read before you arrive in the UK or begin practice.

The story of a life, 22 Mar 2008
Both of the concept of council housing and the author's own. Keenly felt, written with absolute conviction, this is compelling stuff. Lynsey Hanley had clearly been waiting all of her brief life in order to commit this to print. Unmissable.

Not as good as the other reviewers suggest, 18 Mar 2008
This book doesn't quite work. It seeks to be a personal memoir and an account of public housing policies but falls short in both. For example, while there are references to the author's childhood, these are fleeting and not all that interesting or personal. And, while there is some information on Government housing policy, this is unoriginal and relies too much on a few sources (such as Anne Power's work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Another annoyance is that in various places the author condemns people who look askance at people who live on estates and then does exactly the same herself - the section on shellsuits near the end is a perfect example of this. The author is also deeply confused about various things - especially the aims of national politicians, which are caricatured mercilessly but apparently unintentionally. On page 171, she writes, 'I like to think I know what I'm talking about.' This sums up the book perfectly - slightly arrogant and not as good as it thinks it is.

Excellent and refreshing, 28 Feb 2008
Lynsey Hanley has written a refreshingly personal and honest book in "Estates", which is partly a history of social housing in the UK and partly a personal account of her own upbringing on one of Birmingham's big estates.

The two sides of the story Hanley tells are meshed together beautifully, feeding into her central theme of how difficult it is to escape the "walls of the mind" that keep so many people trapped in these places.

She is quite warm and almost nostalgic in the descriptions of her home estate, less so about the sadly typical dump school which she and the other local kids were forced to attend, where a general air of hopelessness was allowed to pervade the atmosphere.

She's now even less complimentary about the estate in East London that she has rather ironically found herself marooned in, as a homeowner in a decaying environment trapped in a long and tortuous decision making process - to demolish or not to demolish.

The author is entirely open and honest about the inherent contradictions in her views and personal position, which could so easily have left her open to unfair charges of hypocrisy.

Excellently written, intelligent, and indeed optimistic in many ways, this is an outstanding work and I look forward to whatever Lynsey writes next.

Good but assumes readers are socialists, 31 Jan 2008

This was a good book to read, and it gives a great analysis of housing policy and conditions over the past 100 years in Britain. The author uses some good case studies, including the Wood estate which she grew up on near Birmingham.

One word of caution. The author is quite subjective when it comes to putting forward her own view on who could qualify for publically funded housing, and what type of housing this should be. She rightly points out that the main beneficiaries of council housing these days are the "undeserving poor", and I agree that this is unfortunate. However, the author seems to think that a house with a garden is a right of everyone. I'm not so sure about that.

Everyone Should Read this Book, 26 Jan 2008
I was expecting not to like this book! The title unfortunately lends itself to pre-conception and prejudice. Ironically, it is this very type of preconception which the book cleverly highlights as the major problem associated with council housing.

The first - person, tabloid style initially annoyed suggesting that I was in for a standard diatribe on a greedy, corrupt capitalistic dynamic responsible for destroying a worthy working class dynamic. I was wrong. The book is balanced and an excellent analysis of the problems of social housing. The first and last chapters particularly discuss the stigma and perceived low status associated with council housing; right from its inception following the Great War through to today where renting in the private sector is quite acceptable whilst renting from the council is not.

The book gives an interesting account of the history of housing and highlights the despairs and post-war imperatives to build. I particularly liked Chapter 4 Der Mauer im Kopf where it cleverly conjoins the idea of isolation and despair of former GDR with the isolation of today's council tenants, responsible for the lack of impetus of their inmates. The book is well documented with housing statistics, historical trends in numbers, which are very revealing. The problems of council housing are complex. They have changed over the years, but are still very much present. Problems, as elsewhere, have been exacerbated since the common use of drugs. The book does not offer a single solution, rather suggesting a need for the actual awareness of the problem, more communications between tenants and housing association and essentially proper expenditure and maintenance on the care of the buildings -and even, in some areas, rebuilding again.


In summary, this was an excellent read which I think this will become a socially important and referenced book. In deals with greed, the class system and unfortunately highlights the growing financial and opportunistic inequalities in our society today. More importantly it raises the view that some sections of society might always be destined to be `council house tenants'. Everyone should read this book!

PS: On a personal note, I was moved with my elder sister from a inner city slum to a large, new east- Birmingham council estate in 1952. The model was different then, being in many ways a `transit base' due to the appalling shortage of post-war housing. Many like my parents never moved out, essentially because they were a product of the rigid and awful social class system - `people like us', my mother said, `don't go to university'. She was of course wrong. Der Mauer im Kopf was endemic then, but the advantage we had as children was the means of outside access and thus awareness of our social position and status. My own `conversion' was listening to the BBC with its RP - a stark contrast to our flat Birmingham accents. Equally, the advantage of the grammar schools was that they were outside the estate. They provided that vital contact with people of different socio-economic backgrounds and gave those essential contacts and aspirations that the book suggests are vital for escape.




slum mega cities, 11 Jun 2007
The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis's book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds.

Thorough Description with No Prescription, 14 Feb 2007
Marxist cultural critic Davis's latest book tackles the global problem of the slums (he uses the U.N. definition: "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure."), which are exploding at a geometric rate across the world. Alas, at the end of this relatively brief work, we have learned of the scale and scope of the problem in mind-numbing detail, and we have learned the source of the problem (at least according to Davis), but that's about it. Alas, anyone interested in a book with this title probably already has a sense of both, and what is utterly lacking in Davis's analysis is any way forward.

Granted, if there were obvious solutions, we'd probably know about those as well -- the real problem is that Davis really, really likes to have it both ways. In other words, there since there is no policy or proposed solution he likes, he attacks all options, even opposite ones, with equal venom, leading one to wonder what the point is. For example: at one point he says that new "periurban" slums lack the community spirit of the inner-city slums people are being relocated from, but then elsewhere he says that this positive community spirit is all a myth and that all slums are Darwinian proving grounds. Governments that don't build public housing come under attack, and those that do also come under attack for it being substandard. Slums are depicted as terrible, and slum clearances are depicted as equally terrible. Sure, none of this is "good", in any sense of the word, but Davis doesn't have anything else to offer either. Most egregious to me is his flailing around on property rights: if the poor don't have titles to their land then they're subject to exploitation, if they do have title they'll just sell it and be exploited. Meanwhile he characterizes Hernando de Soto's interesting vision of how property rights might be used to lift people out of poverty (as detailed in The Mystery of Capital) as a "cargo cult" and "magic wand", which is a disappointingly cynical oversimplification of a rather nuanced and wide-ranging proposal (which is grounded in actual fieldwork instead of the library).

This book is certainly valuable for its description of the problem of slums -- it uses about 700 footnotes (yes, really!) citing an impressive array of books, articles, newsletters, and various published and unpublished reports by the World Bank, UN, governments, and NGOs to draw connections between slums from around the world. Davis paints a picture of slums that are created not by those coming to the city to earn more money, but by the involuntary relocation of those in the way of construction that benefits the wealthy, or the loss of farming at the hands of multinational agribusiness, or civil war, or drought. Of course, all the usual suspects come in for indictment as well (the UN, World Bank, IMF neoliberal capitalism), along with NGOs, the leaders of the third world, the elite of the third world, the middle-class of the third world, and at some points, the poor of the third world. In this book, everyone is guilty (and maybe everybody is, certainly the World Bank and IMF have a terrible track record and are indeed very culpable), but how does this view help anyone? Even worse, nothing we're trying works according to Davis: not micro-credit, not outside NGO help, not militant activism by squatters, and not even the self-help entrepreneurship of the poor.

Some have inferred that Davis is inherently suggesting a reversal of the policies that brought this miserable state to pass, and that massive public spending might be the answer. The problem Davis points out himself is that many of these policies are interwoven with global capitalism, so it's not a simple matter of passing some new resolution. Nor does Davis care for massive public spending (at least not in China or India), and since he points out over and over that third-world elites will simply steal their nation's wealth, the notion that some form of worldwide nationalization of natural resources doesn't seem particularly promising either. Given all this, one has to presume that Davis's unarticulated "solution" is that one day the revolution's gonna come and tear this mother (ie. global capitalism) down. Or maybe that's not what he thinks... we don't know, because Davis never tells us.

Provocative and vital, 06 Dec 2006
This stunning book compels the reader to a new view of the world. A "Planet of Slums" is pretty scary from a moral point of view. What kind of creatures are we to allow such an enormous number of our kind to live out their lives in squalor and poverty? What does this say for the soul of humanity?

From a national security point of view, of course we are not directly threatened, at least not yet. The percent of urbanites in our cities that are slum dwellers, according to a table on page 24 is 5.8 for a total of a "mere" 12.8 million people. Compare that to China's 37.8% (193.8 million) and India's 55.5% (158.4 million) and we are in relatively good shape. The worst country is Ethiopia with 99.4% of the city population living in slums, followed by the Sudan (85.7%) and Bangladesh (84.7%). I did a quick count of the number of people living in slums in the 20 countries listed on the table and it added up to maybe 700 million. Should we worry?

Davis reveals that the Pentagon and think tank thinkers are worried since the cost of dealing with disruptive mobs, slum-bred terrorists, criminal gangs, etc. not only will be high but will require new tactics and strategies. In a sense, some of the problems we are having in Baghdad are the result of our inability to deal with the people of the great slum of Sadr City. I say this somewhat tongue in cheek since of course our "problem" in Iraq goes well beyond slum dissidents.

On the other hand, we might ask, whose fault is it that so many people in the world are locked into such squalid conditions? Certainly you and I had nothing to do with it. Well, that is NOT Davis's point of view. He sees globalization and the policies of governments (especially rich Western governments) and NGOs (especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) as the leading cause of slum proliferation and growth. He writes, "night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side." (p. 206)

This vision, which ends the book, comes from the Epilogue, "Down Vietnam Street." "Vietnam Street" is what the "unemployed teenage fighters of the 'Mahdi Army' in Baghdad's Sadr City...taunt American occupiers with," the implication being that the same failure we experienced in Vietnam is what awaits us in Iraq. (p. 205)

Could this be America a couple of generations down the road? The massive growth of slums in our inner cities in my lifetime as been staggering, even though it is not much compared to places like Mexico City, Mumbai, Cairo, Shanghai, etc. One of the differences between the typical American slum and that of many cities throughout the world is that American slums are of the inner city variety while the others are mostly "peripheral slums." Peripheral slums are worse at least in one sense: the poor not only live in filth without basic services, but they have to commute long distances to their jobs. This is something of an irony since the growth of slums is usually equated with their close proximity to low paying jobs.

Davis gives the official UN definition of a slum as a place "characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure." (pp. 22-23) Clearly from a demographic viewpoint slums are occupied by poor people and poor people have little power, and that is one of the reasons they stay poor. Davis writes as someone who is on the side of the poor and an advocate for doing something about the eternal phenomenon expressed as "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

The people in the slums, as Davis points out, represent surplus labor or even--to use his terminology--superfluous labor. They are the dregs of humanity, caught in a downward spiraling situation in which lack of education, lack of nutrition, high instance of disease and mortality, low wages, bare subsistence, etc. guarantee that they and their children will stay in the same situation. The odds against a leap from the depths of poverty to a middle class existence are greater than ever.

At least that is the message I got from reading this sobering book. By the way, this is the sort of book that is a bit difficult to read because it is so jammed full of facts, figures and jargon terminology. Additionally Davis uses a lot of foreign words that he doesn't define (as though to show the reader that he's been there with the natives), although many of them are self-explanatory. I like the native terminology however and the use of the local names of slums within the larger city.

The overarching question that I was left with was, what does this incredible proliferation of poverty mean for the human race as a whole? What does it say about us? How does it bode for the future? Are we looking at not a perpetual war between nation states (as Orwell had it), but at a perpetual war between the haves and the have nots? It used to be the case that when things got really bad or just incredibly decadent, a revolution or an invasion from without would change things. Now it would appear that the difference between those at the bottom of the economic pyramid and those in the middle and upper classes will only widen. With the exponential explosion in technology that gap may become so great that the haves may someday regard the have nots as member of a different species.

Relentless, nihilistic, compelling, 17 Sep 2006
Mike Davis turns his sights away from Los Angeles and towards the phenomenon of global slums, and starts shooting away with his trademark machine gun prose style, a rat-a-tat-tat staccato of globalized urban poverty, misery, and exploitation, backed up with plenty of reading and research, but no first hand experience.

Davis' doomsaying Marxist critique of Structural Adjustment Programs, government housing reforms and micro-economic self-help is relentless, but ultimately nihilistic - nothing works, the population of an urban poor underclass is growing, and things are getting worse. There are no solutions offered in the book, not even glimpses into possibilities, small scale case studies or broad brush strokes to start a debate. It's powerful stuff, but it must be hard being Mike Davis.

Be careful of wrongly numbered Sections, 16 Jun 2008
Overall this is a pretty good book, just as the other reviewers have said. But, and it's a big but, a few of the critical Section numbers are wrong - such as 38(6), which Moore gives as 37(6). Make sure to double check before you throw them in an essay.

Excellent, 18 Oct 2004
A very good summary of statute and case law in planning. I bought it for my Planning Masters Degree and am still using it as a development control officer. Clear and easy to read.

Practical handbook for English planning law/procedure, 10 Jun 2002
A wealth of expertise takes the reader through a well organised summary of English town and country planning law, up to date at April 2000. Chapter headings include Environmental Impact Assessment, appeals and judicial review, listed buildings and much more besides. A vast array of case law illustrates the points. This subject is complex, the book a true vade mecum.

Concepts of Urban Design, 18 Oct 2001
An extremely interesting book describing the way in which differing Urban Design principles have been associated to the development of urban settlements in America. Using case studies such as Boston and New Jersey, Lynch describes what is important to each areas image through the eyes of both the public and professionals. A core text for any Urban Design student!

Romantic Manual, 10 Jul 2007
This book is not about architecture. It is manual for the unimaginative. Whilst Alexander's observations are pertinent and accurate, they cannot make up for the actual act of creation, which requires more thought. Maybe his other books provide what is missing in this. It is romantic design "features", and can be applied to mainly small scale, socially inspired building of limited durability and more importantly, sustainability. The book provides "ideas" for the intellectually impoverished, however, it is not a panacea, you use it at your peril!

essential tool for making "places", 16 Mar 2007
As an architecture student, I'm amazed by how useful this book has turned out to be - whether you are just planning a small dwelling and want some tips regarding the size of balcony to put in (which will actually be used) or if you are looking at a bigger scheme or town planning on a grand scale, Alexander has done his research and observed carefully what works and what doesn't. The book is neatly divided up by sub-heading for types of features, users, types of habitation, you name it, if it features in any sort of conurbation, Alexander will have made an observation about how people behave in those places. Its very accessible despite its size - the short chapters (there are over 250 in the book) means you can quickly reference the problem you are looking to understand, or just dip into it and read something - for example, a three page explanation of why living in skyscrapers drives you made. So anyone just interested in humankind and living patterns from a trivia level would also probably enjoy this book. It should be on every architecture student's bookshelf.

Going beyond architecture, 19 Nov 2006
Alexander builds a picture of the common connection elements that make a house, a building, a community and a city work. Going beyond trying to quantify or even causation in its narrower sense, he discovers for us how things fit together so we enjoy it and feel comfortable with it. Amazinly, he then uses this "language" as he goes on to give tangible examples, things that we can all relate to. In a way, he discovers elements of post-modern architecture and it challenges thoughts about form and function by insisting on talking about feelings. If you are studying the philosophy of complexity, please consider this book as part of your library.

everyone sould read this........, 14 Nov 2006
I'm an archcitecture student and this was recomended to me by a tutor, as he said i have a similar attitude to design. Asuming it was the same old architecture book i looked it up in the library, my tutor was right.

This book is a must have for anyone, in any feild of design.

This book does not talk about construction methods or techniques but is purely about design.

I stronglly belive that anyone could pick up this book, read it from cover to cover, then read it again as alexander recomends. after doing this anyone could 'design' a 'competent' building.

This book means so much to me (after spending 4 years trying to find a copy) that i affectionetly refer to it as...
... 'the bible'.

Eden would have felt like this...., 06 Jun 2002
When I picked up this book from a friend's bookshelf, I thought it was about language. Being an English graduate, I was curious. However, I was not expecting to respond the way I did. I found a book that has been immensely important to me (even as a non-architect) for the last ten years.

I discovered photos and patterns of living and building that connected with something very deeply within me. It is a book that can move to tears. One reviewer has called it Utopian - I disagree. To me it's Edenic. It has stumbled across something that expresses a latent desire within all of us - to experience true community.

We have been starved over the centuries, especially since the Industrial Revolution, of an environment that is fully congruent with community, with life and with relationships.

The patterns of building in this book are patterns for living in a connected way. It refuses to view buildings as merely aesthetic singularities but recognises the connections between humanness, the land and our constructions.

The book is timeless, not dated, hopeful, insightful, caring for the whole person. I abhor some of the urban monstrosities that are raised up without a single thought for how people experience them whether visually or kinaesthetically, or how they connect with other buildings or the land they are built on.

It's a magical book. Even if you know nothing about architecture, it will delight and stun you. It should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in urban planning or architecture. Please read it!