The Cities: A Failure Everywhere

Most Americans think they know what is meant by "the urban crisis." To many, it means Watts in Los Angeles, the Hough section of Cleveland, Harlem in New York—in short, race riots, poverty, slums. To others, the urban crisis is manifest daily in clogged freeways, rising land costs and inadequate parks, plus a persistent dissatisfaction with urban life. But how many Americans think of the appalling squalor of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the bidonvilles of Algiers, the vecindades of Mexico City, or the nocturnal streets, littered with sleeping bodies, of Calcutta? There, the urban crisis is compounded...