Slum Ecology

Mike Davis in Orion on environmental problems in slums and shanty towns around the world.

Outside Hanoi, where farmers and fishermen are constantly uprooted by urban development, urban and industrial effluents are now routinely employed as free substitutes for artificial fertilizers. When researchers writing for the journal Environment and Urbanization questioned this noxious practice, they discovered cynicism among vegetable and fish producers about the "rich people" in cities. "They don't care about us and fool us with useless compensation [for farm land]," as one purveyor put it, "so why not take some form of revenge?"