>> If Davis sat
>> down and studied a single mega-city in depth, he would discover
>> extraordinary reservoirs of human creativity, ingenuity and solidarity.
>>
>
> Uh. He has. In City of Quartz and a ton of other Los Angeles
> stuff. But doomsayer/anti-boosterist is one of the masks he wears. He
> used to be surprised when people didn't get that he loves Los Angeles.
Nothing wrong with masks. But his writing on the cities of the periphery - his book on "Planet of Slums" is a particularly egregious offender - wallows in problematic catastrophism. It's sort of the same narrative dilemma which Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" runs into - it's a moral critique of how bad neoliberal elites are doing bad things, instead of a systemic analysis of how multinational capitalism operates. Sure, you can't do everything in one book, but a planet of cities means a planet of (potentially organized) city-workers. Why not tell some of their stories?
-- DRR