Arrival City [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This is an important book. It will broaden your view of what is happening in the world today as millions of people set out to make new lives in new lands.

Almost everyone in the world is being affected, in some way, by this movement. They may live where new people are arriving. They may be the ones arriving. Or, perhaps, they are ones left behind, but benefitting from funds sent back.

Some of these relocations are successful. Others fail dismally. It is important that these inevitable movements of people do succeed because it influences the well being of everyone in a city, region, country, or, even, the world. Saunders takes a look at successes and failures over time and points out the important differences. There is a lot to be learned here.

However, I was very disappointed in the writing style. You would expect a respected journalist to write with clarity and a crisp lively style. Instead Saunders is prone to long, convoluted, run-on sentences that often take a careful parsing to find what he really intends to say. To compound matters, the huge numbers of asides, included in parenthesis, are nearly as complex as the rest of their sentence.

So, be forewarned. This book is definitely worth reading, but be prepared to work hard to get the valuable information it has to offer.

This reality check puts perspective to the life struggles of most of the planet's inhabitants. There was so much to identify with, yet so much to empathise with. It was an enlightening account, that empowers one to do the right thing and appreciate all the different cultures for what each group brings to our world.

A must-read book as it so cleverly shows our common humaness rather than our differences so often witnessed in all the popular media.

This is very good book, full of provocative information and sound advice. But it could have been much better. There is an organization problem. There are too many vignettes, too many arrival city examples, and too much detail to make the points the author wants to make. This leads to a great deal of duplication of information, especially when a point has already been made by an earlier example that is as good as or better than the new one. This organizational problem makes the book harder to read than it should be. At times, some of the detail gets tedious.

The good news is that the "meat" in the book makes reading it well worth reading.

The author's purpose is to tell us all about "arrival cities," their characteristics, how they can be made to work and how they can lead to failure. He also wants to give us examples of these communities in various places around the world. We get numerous detailed stories of people who move from a village to its related city. Arrival cities have the following characteristics:

* There is a communications network between the village(s) and the destination city.
* This network provides housing, job leads, community and security in the city.
* Those who move to the city send money back to the village to improve things there.
* Successful arrival cities allow a path to citizenship for foreigners, the possibility of owning a home, the opportunity to open a business and to get loans, and a path to the middle class, if not for the original immigrants, then for their offspring.
* Arrival cities do not automatically thrive on their own; they often need investments in infrastructure, housing, transportation, schools for the youth, language training, lighting and security, all this before sewage, electricity and water. Living in "close quarters" seems to be advantageous to the success of an arrival city, probably due to the ease of communications within such a structure.

And, what is some of the "meat" of the book?

* Perhaps the major event of the 21st century will be a great and final migration of people all around the world moving from rural to urban settings.
* This migration will involve two-to-three billion people. China has a constant "floating population" of between 200 and 300 million in its rural-to-urban migration.
* This final, worldwide migration is inevitable.
* Rural life is monotonous and frightening in contrast to urban living. "There is no romance in rural life. Rural life is the largest single killer of humans today...." High child-mortality and chronic-illnesses are commonalities.
* As of 2008, 3.9 billion people lived in villages, mostly in Africa or Asia. This is half the world's population. By 2050, 70% of the world will live in cities.
* With fewer people in the countryside, the reproduction rate there will drop; in the cities, the family size will drop below 2.1 children.
* About 2050, the world's population will stop growing.
* Between 2050 and the end of the century, the world will have reached a new, permanent equilibrium. There should be a substantial improvement in the rate of poverty.
* This shift mainly to cities will improve lives not only for those in cities, but also for those in villages. The village is transformed into a more urban and cultured place that can better support itself.
* Immigrants and arrival cities can be a major source of wealth-creation.
* Relatively few who move to the arrival city will move back to the village.
* Arrival cities do not cause population growth; in fact, they end it.
* Arrival cities are at the center of the world's future.
* It is the "informal" economy that allows newcomers to find work in the city; says the author, "Self-employment, the starting point of the arrival city, has become the global norm."
* South America is the first place in the world to have experienced the great post-war rural-to-urban migration; its migration is now practically complete. It is now the first fully urbanized area in the developed world.
* France was the first country in the world to experience an arrival city. Its existence led directly to the French Revolution.

There is not time here to review details of specific arrival cities, but it is worthwhile to point out that the author gives the British high marks in its support of arrival cities and new immigrants. The Germans went down the wrong road for many years, before improving things substantially. And in Brazil mistakes were made, but it learned from these mistakes. But the French have really done a bad job in this area, and they have suffered the consequences and will continue to do so. For example, in France, children born of immigrants are not French citizens at birth. As for the U.S., the author, who is British, does not spend much time writing about American situations, and I don't remember him rating us in this light.

Not all arrival cities house foreign residents, as we would think of between the U.S. and Mexico, or between Germany and the Turks and Poles. In India, the arrival cities are primarily housed by Indians from Indian villages. The same is true for China. And while arrival cities tend to be new developments on the outskirts of an existing city, they may also be an area within an existing city, e.g., an area within the city limits of Los Angeles, where a transition takes place as one group moves on and another moves in.

The author tells us that there have been others who have preceded him in writing about this phenomenon. But at least in one point he tells us that he is coining the phase, "arrival cities." If so, that is a notable achievement. One source that he gives reference to is a British geographer who coined the phrase, "migration transition." This has to do with the observation that there is a back-and-forth pattern between a village and its connected city. But at some point, there is a tipping point "where the entire family, and sometimes the entire village, shifted its allegiance and investments to the city and ceased to rely on agriculture."

From other studies, the author tells us, while some will return to the village, "those who stay are the toughest and smartest ones." Another phenomenon is that as the newcomers take housing from groups who can move on to "better" housing, it is the newcomers who tend to better than those who do not move on to the "better" housing. "Migrants from the villages come with very high expectations, often higher than those of the native-born city dwellers."

To outsiders, arrival cities may look like slums with little opportunity. But to those on the inside, these are slums of opportunity, of upper-mobility. An important point the author wants to make is that these cities are often misunderstood, which results in campaigns to destroy them and/or discourage their formation. But, per the author, these communities are really the future of the destination city, its future lifeblood.

One arrival city is worth a look. It is Shenzhen, which is across the Bay from Hong Kong. As recently as 1980, it was a fishing village of about 25,000 people. It became a community of about 14 million. It spawned a thriving middle-class, huge factories, and now has a world-class university in its midst.

Perhaps the following is a good summary of what the phenomenon of arrival cities is all about: "New people create new economies, and those economies develop best when those people, no matter how poor, are able to stage their arrival in an organic, self-generated manner." And to close, I will repeat two of the author's claims: Arrival cities are at the center of the world's future, and this worldwide migration of people from rural to urban settings is inevitable.

The contents of the book gave me information that I have found very valuable. I think if the book had been written in a more organized, smoother way, it would become a better seller. As it is, I still view it as a very important book.