Arrival City
The Final Migration and Our Next World
By: Doug Saunders
Published: September 21, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
ISBN-10: 0307396894
ISBN-13: 978-0307396891
Publisher: Knopf Canada
"What will be remembered about the twenty-first century, more than anything else except perhaps the effects of a changing climate, is the great, and final, shift of human populations out of rural, agricultural life and into cities", writes international award winning journalist Doug Saunders, in his brilliant and landmark book Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World. The author describes the enormous human migration from rural areas, to find tenuous footholds in the dynamic, and often misunderstood, urban transitional enclave of the arrival city.
Doug Saunders traveled the world and met with the residents of arrival cities in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, and North America, examining where these makeshift communities worked effectively; and where they failed. The author finds commonalities in functional arrival cities, and points to why these ad hoc cities within cities succeed in their goals. For the residents, the arrival city is one of transition. The recent rural migrants, escaping the grinding poverty of their home villages, seek a better life with more opportunity in the great cities of the world. For the inhabitants of the slums and shantytowns and barrios of the emerging world, these hastily built enclaves represent hope for the future. For the newest residents, the arrival city is a precarious bridge between the home village, and a fully urban life. The new arrival will continue to keep one foot in the village, and send money home to support the remaining family, while setting down tentative roots in the city. Not every new arrival succeeds, but for those who do, their lives and that of their families, are changed forever.
Doug Saunders (photo left) recognizes that this vast human migration story is being replayed on a global basis. With some arrival cities achieving success, and becoming integrated into the main cities, there are valuable lessons to be learned by other cities. The author explodes many of the myths that have grown up around immigrants in general, and about the dynamics of the arrival city in particular. The common threads of hope for a better life, entrepreneurship, and new vibrancy offered by the newest arrivals is very often mistaken for static poverty. As Doug Saunders points out, the very transitional nature of an arrival city, with its newest impoverished inhabitants, gives the appearance of poverty. It is critical to understand that the arrival city is a dynamic, ever evolving place, where people often move on to higher quality suburbs, where families are reunited, and where entire villages migrate through the shared information of chain migration. Doug Saunders describes how high density, mixed land use, and infrastructure support, combined with more secure property ownership, provide a rich and diverse arrival city that works. Low density, heavily zoned project style development is not an effective format for arrival cities, or for existing residents.
For me, the power of the book is how Doug Saunders provides a powerful and compelling case for not only supporting the arrival city, but for embracing it. By reaching out to the arrival city, with infrastructure, support, and opportunities, the arrival city can and will succeed. Not only does the author consider the arrival city a key to advancement for rural migrants, but also a critical growth and renewal force for enhancing the economy and quality of life for the city itself. The new migrants bring an entrepreneurial spirit to the city, starting businesses and creating employment for themselves and other new arrivals.
Doug Saunders proposes some important policy concepts for local, regional, and national governments to consider to embrace the opportunities presented by the new inhabitants. The older panaceas of citizenship only, or restrictions on business start-ups, and on high rise development have failed. In their place, the author recommends a more organic and ground up approach to the strengthening of the arrival city and its residents. The people moving to arrival cities are not seeking a handout, according to the author, but instead a leg up in realizing their dreams of upward social mobility. Doug Saunders goes beyond mainstream analysis as well, and shares some insights and ideas for helping communities and national governments embrace the arrival city and its inhabitants. The result is a stronger local economy, more opportunity for both the new arrivals, and for the existing city.
I highly recommend the perceptive and seminal book Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World by Doug Saunders, to anyone seeking real and effective public policy options for fully integrating the arrival city and its migrant inhabitants into the main city and into the overall economy. The author makes a powerful and convincing case as to the tremendous mutual benefits achieved through embracing immigration and internal population movement. The evidence is overwhelming as to the value, vibrancy, and renewal provided through the addition of new people to the cities of the world. Doug Saunders has written one of the most important books on the evolution of the city in terms of global human migration, and it should be required reading for everyone.
Read the masterwork on the topic of the last great human migration, Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World by Doug Saunders, and it is very likely that whatever your views and opinions are now on immigration, they will be challenged, and probably changed with this book. It is rare that a book has the ability to study a complex and divisive issue like human migration, both within and between countries, in an insightful and comprehensive manner. This book is an essential to any reading list on human migration, the dynamics of cities, and on the benefits and challenges of immigration. It is not to be missed.
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