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squatters and squatter cities around the world
Posts
Blog Archive
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2007
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January
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- Survivors Village
- Out of sight, out of home
- Slums of Addis
- Graphic Ghana - News
- Gringos to the rescue
- 'The Capital Does Not Only Belong to the Rich'
- 'I am the Professor of my suffering'
- Dutch squatters face anti-liberal backlash : Mail ...
- Forced evictions in Angola...is the Catholic Churc...
- More Murambatsvina
- Danish police arrest squatters
- Port Harcourt's New Year Gift of Horror
- When squatting is better than 'upgrading'
- The Pottinger Settlement
- A 10' X 10' shanty in Bangalore is worth more than...
- fire leaves hundreds homeless in Kolkata
- Squatters create a new 'ministry for the housing c...
- Catch up
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January
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About Me
- rn
- --news from Robert Neuwirth-- I recently (January 2020) signed a contract with Beacon Press for a new book of reportage on the economics of community. I'm also working on a collection of short stories about economics called The Book of Derivatives. Backstory: I've written two previous books: Stealth of Nations (on the global growth of the informal economy) & Shadow Cities (on the global growth of squatter communities). I live in New York City and do most of my writing on manual typewriters.
1 comment:
Obviously I am a bit behind on the news. I just saw this. Very sad. I was in Accra last October/November, doing a housing study; Sodom and Gomorrah was one of the settlements I covered.
Two fires in a month sounds a bit suspicious to me.... given that the settlement is controversial to begin with. The government has resettled "squatters" from there once before, and there are on-going attempts to clear this site once again (the proposal is to resettle the residents some 20 miles away. The details are stil being worked out.) Red flags, anyone?
S&G, despite it's name, and despite being one of the most horrific places to live in (in my experience), is truly amazing -- a vivid example of how even the poorest of the poor learn to survive. The settlement a hub for entrepreneurial activity; it's divided into smaller neighborhoods by occupation (wood/carpentry; auto repair, vegetable selling, etc..) and ethnicity/religion. Lack of basic water and sanitation is not a deterrant: there are private paid toilets/ baths(even if the quality may be objectionable!), water for drinking can be bought in little sachets; washerwomen do your laundry for a small fee; food vendors cook and sell food (which works out cheaper than cooking yourself), and so on. This truely is a city in itself, in need of a lot of help, but rich in character, diversity, and markets.
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