Arrival City

December 20, 2010
In a globe-trotting narrative alive with on-the-ground reportage, journalist Saunders offers a cautionary but essentially optimistic perspective on global urbanization. He concentrates on the slums and satellite communities that act as portals from villages to cities and, in turn, revitalize village economies. Policy makers misunderstand at their peril these "arrival cities"—London's heavily Bangladeshi Tower Hamlets, Brazil's favelas, China's Shenzhen. Citing the statistical relationship between urbanization and falling poverty rates, as well as historical precedents like Paris ("the first great arrival city of the modern world"), Saunders insists urban migration means improvement overall, and that the arrival city serves as a springboard for the integration of new populations. While the picture of urbanization veers from gloomier forecasts by analysts like Mike Davis (Planet of Slums), it does so by eschewing direct questioning of the global economic system driving much of this migration. Barely addressed are food, energy, and water shortages, or the fact that healthy city growth requires preservation of surrounding ecosystems on which cities habitually wreak havoc. Saunders's narrative, however, does plead for rational and humane planning within global capitalism to ensure that arrival cities fulfill their purpose and achieve their potential.

Starred review from May 1, 2011

Incisive study of worldwide rural-to-urban migration, its complex social mechanisms and the consequences of institutional neglect.

Globe and Mail European bureau chief Saunders reveals how responses to the greatest migration in world history will either secure socio-economic stability or sink it into a galaxy of civil unrest and revolution. Every year, approximately two billion people migrate from rural villages to "arrival cities" across the world. Often constructed in haste and desperation, and in the margins of the main city, arrival cities are highly susceptible to social instability. Successful ones, like New York's Chinatown, overcome this adversity to later become highly desirable places to live, reversing the internal-urban migratory patterns. This reversal, often derogatorily referred to as "gentrification," is a result of an arrival city's success, not its failure. With thousands of arrival cities across the world, success leads to a flourishing middle class, failure to violence, gang activity and sometimes revolution and civil war. Left ignored, essential social services can be provided by migrant-driven ethnic movements, like the Shiv Sena in Mumbai, who provide substantial community services, but accomplish the tasks through criminal practices like bulldozing slums, neglecting the most basic sanitary needs. These movements, however, only take hold when governments take rural migrants for granted, allowing dangerous and divisive politics to fill the vacuum. Rural-urban migrants need stable networks to provide fundamentals like security and equity, including a system of urban remittance on which many villages depend. Governments that recognize this and help provide for such essentials as home ownership, land titles, schools, hospitals, security forces and transportation services can interrupt the mechanisms of social upheaval that lead to violence and revolution. Never speculative, Saunders dexterously weaves personal case studies—some of which are practically unspeakable and ultimately overwhelming—with the broader institutional context.

An essential work for those who pay attention to the effects of globalization—which is, or at least should be, nearly everyone.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

A rural to urban migration is playing out now around the world, driven by a desire to escape rural poverty for an opportunity to attain urban middle-class status. London-based journalist Saunders (European bureau chief, Globe and Mail, Toronto) details the landscape of arrival cities--those urban subunits with larger migrant concentrations--around the world and the circumstances of today's migrant classes from arrival to assimilation. Through a panoramic look at 20 arrival cities and a seemingly innumerable number of migrant stories, Saunders argues that opportunities for education, owning housing, residing with immediate family members, and building businesses within these arrival cities determine whether migrant families are able to become successful, urban middle-class citizens or become stuck in an urban poverty turning to violence or extreme cultural or religious fundamentalism. He also evaluates the effect of arrival cities on both the villages left behind and the middle-class urban areas being striven toward. VERDICT While this book is presented as popular reading, the depth and breadth of the material often gives it more of an academic feel. Recommended to those seriously interested in current global class mobility and factors in successful migration.--Catherine McMullen, MLIS, Portland, OR

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.