Illegal Cities

Life among the Third World's squatters.

Robert Nelson from the August/September 2005 issue

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Neuwirth notes the irony that the world headquarters of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme--known as U.N. Habitat--is located in Nairobi just a few miles from the Kibera shantytown. The officials of this world agency almost never visit Kibera and seem barely aware of its existence. This is typical, Neuwirth reports, of an agency whose record shows a "dismal 25 years of inaction and sloth" across the world. The U.N. housing program instead specializes in holding conferences attended by well-paid international civil servants and private consultants.

Neuwirth is strongest as a journalist and weakest as a social theorist. Shadow Cities is at its best shining an investigative lens into areas of urban life that have seldom been described before. It is a wonderful story of the vitality and creativity of ordinary people who have managed to survive and sometimes even prosper in the face of government indifference if not hostility.

With a little help, the residents of squatter settlements could do much more for themselves. They need a firmer land tenure that would cost almost nothing to implement--in contrast to the billions of dollars of international aid funds that are today being squandered in the Third World. I hope Shadow Cities will focus public attention on the needs of the world's poorest urban residents.�