Megacities

Kees Koonings is Associate Professor of Development Studies and Latin American Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Utrecht University. He has published on development issues, ethnicity, the military, democracy and violence in Latin America. He has previously co-edited Societies of Fear (1999), Political Armies (2002), Armed Actors (2004) and Fractured Cities (2007). His current research interests include the armed conflict and peace processes in Colombia, and social mobilization and citizenship in Brazil.Dirk Kruijt is Honorary Professor of Development Studies at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University. He has published on social exclusion, poverty and Informalisation, military dictatorship, guerrilla movements, civil wars and ethnic conflicts, peace negotiations and post-war reconstruction. He has previously co-edited Societies of Fear (1999), Political Armies (2002), Armed Actors (2004) and Fractured Cities (2007) and published Guerrillas (2008) with Zed Books.

Trends in the social and political landscapes of today's cities will underpin significant aspects of our global future now that the world's population is mainly urban and are therefore ever more pressing arenas for social science research. This book provides a compelling, and at times devastating, appraisal of contemporary evidence about the social, political and economic exclusion of the poor urban majority in the global south. Of particular significance is the book's focus on the ways in which violence has become an increasing element in the exclusion of the urban poor from the potential benefits of an urban existence in certain megacities. Particularly in large Latin American cities, the everyday experience of the residents in low-income settlements is so affected by violence - from drug-related gangs, from private armed militias and from deeply corrupt and inadequate police forces that it has become the worst of the many problems they face. When Janice Perlman who, in the 1970s, championed the idea that the concept of urban marginality was a myth argues that violence in Rio de Janeiro has made marginalization a reality, we should take note and listen. Megacities also provides insightful analysis of developments in our understanding of urban politics in the global south, and the various explicit and covert ways the urban poor with varying degrees of success seek to improve their livelihoods in globalizing urban centres. There are crucial questions involved such as who has a right to the city, are there separate categories of citizens and pseudo-citizens, and can cities fulfil their potential as sites where democracy might be facilitated, rather than areas where people's options are closed down by the fear and violence that deepening inequality inevitably brings?

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. The Rise of Megacities and the Urbanization of Informality, Exclusion and Violence - Dirk Kruijt & Kees KooningsPart I: The Social Dynamics of Exclusion and Violence in Megacities2. From Popular Movements to Drug Gangs to Militias: An Anatomy of Violence in Rio de Janeiro by Robert Gay3. Megacity's Violence and its Consequences in Rio de Janeiro by Janice Perlman4. Coping with Urban Violence: State and Community Responses to Crime and Insecurity in Guayaquil, Ecuador by Caroline Moser5. Middle Eastern Megacities: Social Exclusion, Popular Movements and the Quiet Encroachment of the Urban Poor by Asef BayatPart II: Political and Policy Dimensions of Urban Exclusion and Violence6. Urban Governance and the Paradox of Conflict by Jo Beall7. Shoot the Citizen, Save the Customer: Participatory Budgeting and Bare Citizenship in Porto Alegre, Brazil by Sérgio Gregório Baierle8. Crisis of the State, Violence in the City by Mariano Aguirre9. Urban Exclusion and the (False) Assumptions of Spatial Policy Reform in South Africa by Susan Parnell and Owen CrankshawConclusions: Governing Exclusion and Violence in Megacities by Kees Koonings & Dirk Kruijt