G'day Michaels,
> Rob, your suggestion about livability and public services is very
> interesting. I would like to see it integrated with the >contradiction
>that many of the major cities would love to be able to >exclude the poor from them
>altogether -- except that they need people >to do the menial chores.
> ... snipping MK's sad tale of Helsinki ...
Yeah, I clearly forgot, in my unusual fit of optimistic excitement, that the
definition of 'public' is up for grabs ... it's all heading towards what I saw
as a kid in South Africa and Namibia. The white folks in town, and the black
folks in a 'compound' or 'township' on the outskirts. Those in the latter
were obliged to keep themselves gainfully employed, as failure so to do would
result in their return to the parched 'homelands', where at least they'd get
to see their families ... starve.
Societies without a nice clear skin-colour differential to work with are gonna
have to find some new mode of racialising the population to legitimate this,
of course, but I don't doubt they're up to the job ... I believe something
like this is already well in hand in China, where the desperate newcomers to
those glistening new cities of theirs find themselves readily classified,
neatly segregated, and duly cast to the fringes.
Sigh,
Rob.
