The first person to come to my mine was Patrick Bond, who keeps track of lbo, lives in South Africa(?) and has struggled on the ground with the complete spectrum you mention, i.e. urban development, foreign NGOs, local public policy. The NGO side most familiar that I remember has to do with the complexity of the IMF, WB, UN, WHO, AIDs and local public health systems. Very hot topics.
Don't forget to include the picture book study guide of Sebastiao Salgado. In fact, you can skip all the text and argument and go straight to the images. Salgado is terminally dark, darker than your students might want to bare. But he is also from the grand tradition of ennobling the human condition, struggle beyond hope.
In the cooler economics of global order, there is also Julio Huato who drops in sometimes, and Sabri Oscu over on Pen-l who used to be on both lists. Ravi seems to keep track of this kind of thing, sometimes.
The point to mentioning them is they have all lived in other countries, Mexico, Cuba, Turkey, South Africa, India... they have their own experience and opinions about NGOs and local public policy. The key is to gain at least some perception that comes from another country, and a different sensibility. Your American children, well my American children make me very sad. Where do you think you came from?
I am afraid I have an even nastier view than Mike Davis. I think of these simpering NGO do gooders as re-contructed priests who came over with Cortez. California history is steeped in this shit, from the missions along El Camino Real, to the whole Hacienda system in the coastal and central San Joaquin valleys, quaint Mexican influences that elide the concept of slavery, serfdom, racism, and oppression by a Spanish feudal order. On the plus side there are olive and citrus groves, vinyards, ranceros, music, folklore, and indiginious arts---a whole Latin of the Americas tradition that derives from the Latinfundia of the Roman Empire.
Unfortunately, I don't see anything like that kind of cultural richness emerging from the ice-anglo neoliberal imperium with its anal protestant-capital fundamentalism.
CG