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Title:
Planet of slums

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From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neo-liberal theory

Title:
Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism : Evil Paradises

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Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel BertrandrnMonk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternaternrealities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfetteredrnby unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts,rnand in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption andrninequality surpass our worst nightmares.

Title:
Dead cities and other tales

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For the late great Mike Davis, the ravaging of the climate by capital—and his prescient analysis of its consequences for those of us left to deal with the resulting crises—was always a central part of his urban geography. In these wide ranging, incisive, and hauntingly relevant essays, Davis asks us to consider what we would find if we put a microscope to the ruins of Metropolis, and provides a riveting account of the disasters—natural, man-made, and those (as in the case of climate calamity) where the distinction is impossible to make—that he finds on the other end. He begins his examination by sifting through the rubble of the twin towers in the wake of 9/11, presciently identifying the seeds of war already germinating in the scorched soil of ground zero, and closes by considering how little prepared our hollowed out urban infrastructure is to deal with shocks of any kind, be they from car bombs or ice storms. In between we are treated to tours of blasted wastelands where American generals built and destroyed replicas of Berlin, glimpses of Las Vegas’s penchant for annihilating its own best-known landmarks, and other riveting tales of the dialectic between nature and the city.

Title:
Au-delà de Blade Runner

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Véritable laboratoire social et urbanistique, Los Angeles préfigure le modèle à venir des mégapoles modernes : destruction de toute mixité sociale par le cloisonnement strict des populations dans des quartiers réservés, laissés, pour certains, à l’abandon et à la domination des gangs, tandis que les couches les plus aisées se « bunkerisent » grâce à la généralisation de la vidéo-surveillance et des milices de sécurité privées. La ville vit désormais dans un état perpétuel de « guerre sociale de faible intensité », susceptible à tout moment d’éclater. À la fois sociologique, urbanistique et politique, l’essai de Mike Davis offre, au-delà du cas de Los Angeles, un portrait poignant de l’Amérique contemporaine et présage de l’évolution qui menace les sociétés occidentales.

Title:
Magical urbanism: Latinos reinvent the US city

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Is the capital of Latin America a small island at the mouth of the Hudson River? Will California soon hold the balance of power in Mexican national politics? Will Latinos reinvigorate the US labor movement? These are some of the provocative questions that Mike Davis explores in this fascinating account of the Latinization of the US urban landscape. As he forefully shows, this is a demographic and cultural revolution with extraordinary implications. With Spanish surnames increasing five times faster than the general population, salsa is becoming the predominant ethnic rhythm (and flavor) of contemporary city life. In Los Angeles, Houston, San Antonio, and (shortly) Dallas, Latinos outnumber non-Hispanic whites; in New York, San Diego and Phoenix they outnumber Blacks. According to the Bureau of the Census, Latinos will supply fully two-thirds of the nation’s population growth between now and the middle of the 21st century when nearly 100 millions Americans will boast Latin American ancestry.

Title:
Au-delà de Blade Runner : Los Angeles et l'imagination du desastre

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Summary:
Cet essai sociologique, urbanistique et politique montre, à travers l'exemple de Los Angeles, ce que sera le visage futur de la ville, moins spectaculaire et plus effrayant que la vision futuriste offerte par Blade Runner. Los Angeles porte déjà en elle le modèle vers lequel vont tendre toutes les mégapoles : destruction de la mixité sociale par cloisonnement strict des couches de populations.

Title:
Amy Franceschini: victory gardens 2007: a plan for subsidized urban gardens

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Summary:
Introduction by Lucy Lippard, essay by Mike Davis. Between October 2006 and April 2007, three gardens were given away. Each garden was planted in one of the three microclimates in San Francisco: sunbelt, transition belt and fog belt. The households were selected based on an ad posted on Craiglist. It was posted on October 10th ad midnight. By 9:30am October 11th, we had received over 800 responses. Each garden was delivered on the Victory Garden Trike and included a planting party, a Starter Kit, and two lessons. The lessons included how to build a raised bed, install a drip system, planting instructions, seasonal planting, seed saving, harvesting methods, composting, and canning. 1 Artist 1 Concept is a series of books by individual artists, produced by The Expanding Color System.

Title:
Planet of slums

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Summary:
In this book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, and even from economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly unforeseen development, and asks whether the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, are volcanoes waiting to erupt.

Title:
Late Victorian Holocausts: El niño famines and the making of the Third World

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Summary:
Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites.

Title:
City of quartz: excavating the future in Los Angeles

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No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, “Los Angeles brings it all together.” To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where “you can rot without feeling it.” To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide- ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias. In "City of Quartz", Davis reconstructs LA’s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel Westa city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity.