Doug Saunders' important new book, Arrival City, has its finger on an unglamorous, but bitingly important issue:

the largest migration in human history. This is set to happen within most of our lifetimes. In 2008, for the first time ever, a majority of the world's population lived in cities. According to the UN, the globe's rural population will begin to decline in absolute terms within a decade, but its urban total will double between now and 2050, from 3.4 to 6.4 billion. In short, mass urbanization of the Third World is on its way. While academic titles such as Global Urbanization or Global Frontier have plumbed this phenomenon, no single book - until now -has breathed such life and human drama into it. Less prone to the impressionistic exaggeration of Robert Kaplan or the flights of fancy of Mike Davis, the book engages while remaining serious. It pulls in the reader by centring its storyline on the fate of its numerous lead characters. We begin with Xu Quin Quan, the Chinese village patriarch whose rural hamlet of 70 was absorbed within a decade into Chonqing, population 4 million and growing. Saunders does a nice job of foregrounding the precariousness of rural life in the global South, with its primitive conditions and the ever-present threat of famine. From Dhaka to Istanbul, Rio to Mumbai, he traces the fate of rural migrants to the 'arrival city': the unincorporated, unwanted slums which festoon major cities in the developing world. We encounter Sanjay Solkar, a 20year old in Mumbai whose rural family depend on his remittances; Jainal Abedin of Dhaka, the cable-TV man, a figure of power in the slums; and illegal immigrants to Europe like Lisaneddin Assa of Morocco, now living in the immigrant community of Parla, Spain. We meet migrant-turned-local politician Sabri Kocygit, whose fiery Marxism has mellowed as his former squatter camp has, along with many others, moved up in the world to become an established Istanbul neighbourhood which dwarfs the original city. The book tells a fascinating tale of how unsanitary collections of shacks gradually morph into integrated parts of their cities housing tax-paying, law-abiding residents. The theme of upward mobility is central to the book's message: that urban 'arrival cities' are the dynamic first steps for rural villagers on their way to middle class modernity. We need to stop demeaning and isolating the arrival city and begin to embrace it, Saunders implores. The entrepreneurialism of the migrants can be harnessed by better access to credit, secure property rights, improved transport links to the city and less red tape. Schools, sanitation, water, policing and electricity should be provided by the government and NGOs. It is more important to hook the shantytown up to the modern city than to enforce zoning laws based on utopian dreams of ordered urban planning. When established cities try to quarantine or demolish the arrival city, the result is human misery. Precious networks, whose tentacles reach deep into the countryside where they bring sustenance and improvement, are torn asunder. In any case, the residents will rebuild. If they remain isolated, their valiant efforts to modernise will come to nothing. Dashed hopes will express themselves in class, nationalist or religious militancy. This was true of Paris in 1848, Tehran in 1979 and in many other trouble spots. Elsewhere, organised crime may flourish, as in the once-violent Jardim Angela in Sao Paulo. In all cases, the excluded slum bites back. The city therefore cannot afford to neglect its own backyard. Governments must acknowledge the arrival city as a cog in the wheel of national development. The three billion

rural arrivals who will beat a path to the city in the next 40 years are the heroes of this story, and we must do our utmost to 'turn this final migration into a force of lasting progress'. There is a clear tension in the book. On the one hand Saunders the libertarian extols the virtues of migrants and their anarchic capitalism, and pleads 'hands off' to governments and urban planners. On the other, the social democrat in him wants governments to invest in the slums, bring law and order and normalise the arrival city. All can agree that bulldozing shantytowns is disastrous. But it is much trickier to argue in favour of squatters' rights and turning a blind eye to illegal activities from the siphoning of water and electricity to tax evasion. So too with government investment: should the government jump in and cure the slum's social ills as in Santa Marta, Brazil? Saunders applauds Lula's efforts, but what if this diverts funds from other pressing social projects, creating a new set of winners and losers? The book is correct that rural life is often nasty, brutish and short, but if all our attention lands on the outskirts of the city, there is a risk that one distortion could yield to another. Urban development needs to be balanced by rural development, including land reform. If urbanization continues, so be it, but let it do so on a level playing field. Given its western readership, some reference to the West is warranted, but there is far too much ink spilled over our parochial problems. In the next 40 years, the developing world will add over 3 billion urbanites and the West 30 million. The historical chapter on the West is well-taken, but to devote a further three of ten to Europe and North America is lopsided. Immigration to the West is largely a sideshow, a lottery for the lucky few who benefit from money or connections, and whose significance in this great global story is effectively zero. It is an issue of a completely different order, whose benefits for sending and receiving countries, and global climate change, are hazy at best. The focus on India, Brazil, Turkey and China is about right, but these are all superstars. What about the stragglers? We need to hear more about urbanization in Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Congo, emerging African giants whose populations will all exceed Russia's in a decade. How are they coping and how can we help? Saunders correctly identifies the connection between urban slums and insurrection, but mistakenly believes this is essentially a product of their material condition. A streak of environmental determinism runs through the book which intimates that radical ideas stem from poor urban planning and economic opportunities. But an equally powerful explanation is that rural villagers have a less tolerant, more homogeneous sense of society, which collides with the chaotic cosmopolitan reality of the city. This, rather than their cramped unsanitary lifestyles, may explain why they gravitate to militancy, and suggests that there are no simple heroes and villains in the story. Still, these blemishes do not tarnish the value of this book. Saunders' greatest strength lies in the global breadth of his reportage, which moves from the alleys of Mumbai to the soulless banlieues of Paris with the urgency of an international spy thriller. His evocative descriptions of open sewers, precarious dwellings, dark dangerous spaces, noisy slum factories and the indomitable spirit of humanity transform a complex, serious subject into a page-turning read. Consider his description of Caracas: 'the endless shantytown slums...were becoming

unliveable, their canyons of sewage undermining the very hills that supported them, causing their roads to collapse and entire neighbourhoods to plummet off the hills in rivers of mud and human waste'. One day we shall bid good riddance to such places, but until then, enjoy this book.