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Welcome to the Urban
Jungle: How Cities are Changing the World
Cities are more than a concrete jungle as all have a life of their own with a flavour of the local culture. Poverty of the rural areas pushes the migrants to the cities. They break away from the homogenous, rural communities to form new associations in the urban areas. Once in the city, the migrants extend their feelers to other bigger cities and there emerges a unique chain in the global city. Tracing the Great Migration, the book describes the initial stage of urban migration where the pioneers set up a permanent home base in a regional town. Chain migrations continue and soon the town is converted into a bustling city. In the second phase, migrant families move to the larger cities where they create their own networks, "which support their specialisations in the new occupations, their dominance in particular industries `85 ." In the final phase, the second and third generation urban migrant families emigrate and lay claim over the global city. Analysing the process of urbanisation in Detroit, Brugmann points towards racism faced by the African Americans and the threats by the hate group Ku Klux Klan. Ghettoisation lead to "Black urbanisation" which reinforced the political machinery and created a political leadership among them. The revolution in Iran took everyone by surprise and studies of the Middle East cities show how nondescript towns have created an urban stronghold. The book offers an excellent view of the world’s largest slum Dharavi in Mumbai. It focuses on the transformation of a low-lying village settlement to a major contributor in the globalised industrial economy. This book has explored all aspects of urbanisation and makes the readers see that how urban landscapes affect the biodiversity and how living creatures have adapted to the ecological conditions. Mating practices among the homo urbanis have also evolved over time. Women in the cities stress on the educational attainments and the income generating potential of the males. To face the challenges of urban revolution, the book offers three urban strategy solutions. The first condition is ‘City of Crisis’ ideally represented by Mumbai and Detroit. Different socio-economic groups compete for advantage and create a situation of crisis, which can only be addressed by common urbanism. Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg and Toronto fall under ‘Great Opportunity City’ that lacks the local urbanism and tends to alienate the people. Barcelona, Chicago and Curitiba exemplify the ‘Strategic City’. Urbanisation here is in synchronisation with politics, institutions and local practices. Connecting the process of urbanisation with globalisation, Brugmann has highlighted the fact that the global city is treading on thin waters and has pointed towards all the challenges faced by the cities in the 21st century.
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BASED
on two decades of research, Brugman has analysed the challenges faced by
the growing cities. He rightly argues that urbanisation is a
revolutionary process. The increased concentration of the masses in the
urban areas is changing the world. As people become homo urbanis,
the earth is being organised into a global city, which is well
connected but highly unstable.