IT WAS one of the biggest audiences at the UN鈥檚 June Cities Summit in
Istanbul. Hundreds packed in to hear Laurie Garrett, author of the recent
bestseller The Coming Plague, tell how Third World megacities were the
forcing houses for new global pandemics of malaria, flu, dengue fever and much
more.
Diseases such as yellow fever and the Ebola virus, once denizens of the
jungle, were taking to city life and booming in the insanitary conditions of
squatter settlements. As farmers brought their animals to town, they created the
鈥渋deal circumstances for amplifying rare diseases that may jump species鈥�. The
spread of HIV was 鈥渃aused by the urbanisation of Africa鈥�, Garrett said.
鈥淚ncreased human density is a major threat to our species.鈥�
Scary stuff, and no doubt with a hint of truth somewhere. But hadn鈥檛 I heard
that millenarian tone and the breathless well-heeled audience somewhere before?
鈥淚 know where,鈥� said Sunetra Puri of the International Planned Parenthood
Federation afterwards. 鈥淚t is like the early days of the population campaigners,
when they were convinced the world was about to be overrun by the poor, all
breeding like rabbits.鈥�
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And so it was. Paul Ehrlich, as much a prophet of demographic doom today as
30 years ago, memorably began his 1968 blockbuster The Population Bomb
with a description of a late-night taxi ride through Delhi: 鈥淭he streets seemed
alive with people,鈥� he said. 鈥淧eople eating, people washing, people sleeping,
people visiting, arguing and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the
taxi window begging鈥� People, people, people, people.鈥� The scene, he said,
had 鈥渁 hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel? We were, frankly,
蹿谤颈驳丑迟别苍别诲.鈥�
Well, yes. But he probably saw fewer people that night in Delhi than he would
in a London rush hour. Though of course they were poor and non-European.
In Ehrlich鈥檚 nightmare, as with those of other environmental doom-mongers of
a generation ago, it was the poor that loomed largest, multiplying like a
bacillus and gobbling up the planet鈥檚 resources. No matter that it was really
the rich world that was doing most of the gobbling. As the famous First World
War song claimed, the rich may get the gravy but 鈥渋t鈥檚 the poor wot gets the
产濒补尘别鈥�.
Every new environmental or health scare seems to come with a taint of green
fascism. Always the same theme, overt or sotto voce, that the world鈥檚 poorest
people will be our undoing. Is this so different from the crusaders鈥� medieval
cry against barbarians at the gate and the infidel hoards?
And don鈥檛 think the messianic tone has gone in the sophisticated 1990s. For
all the talk of 鈥渟ustainable development鈥� in the modern green lexicon, half the
citizens of the rich world sincerely believe that it is poor tropical farmers
burning the rainforests, rather than their own fossil-fuel-burning gas-guzzling
lifestyles that are causing the greenhouse effect. Somehow, the prospects of
millions of Indian cars and of an ozone-destroying refrigerator in every Chinese
home are more terrifying to them than conspicuous Western consumption.
People pollution, they call it. A sickening phrase, as if the original sin of
the poor is to be born at all. Green guru Teddy Goldsmith, brother of James,
once described to me in apocalyptic tones how the world was dumping billions of
people, unwanted by the modern global economy, into the Third World鈥檚
megacities. He saw them as passive victims rather than villains. But that is as
bad.
For people are not pollution鈥攖hey are a massive resource. Who builds
most of the houses in Third World cities? Who provides the jobs? Who grows their
food? It鈥檚 not governments, not big companies and, often, not legal entities of
any sort. It鈥檚 the poor urban citizens themselves. In many cities the squatter
colonies, so reviled and feared in the rich world, are the engines of social and
economic development. Go into almost any colony and you will find a mass of
self-help organisations, business and activist groups that would shame almost
any Western city. If this is the bacillus, roll on the plague.
In Istanbul I found myself agreeing less with Garrett and the new
doom-mongers gathering to give the last rights to 鈥渕ushrooming megacities鈥�, and
more with John Gummer. He spoke movingly to the main conference about cities as
鈥渂eacons of hope鈥�, where people, even the poorest, could take charge of their
lives as never before. He spoke about a 鈥渃ulture of life鈥�, where people matter.
And he meant it. He took the trouble to turn up to a fringe meeting to hector
British architects for designing buildings people didn鈥檛 want to live in, and
British planners for creating 鈥渃laustrophobic, dreary, empty and impoverished鈥�
cities.
He characterised the descendants of Le Corbusier and Marx alike as part of
the 鈥渃ulture of death鈥�, more concerned with pigeonholing people than empowering
them, with destroying communities that should be nurtured. He probably had in
mind Camden or Coventry. He might equally have meant Karachi or Caracas.
Once you start treating people as a problem, he said, as consumers who cannot
give, as mouths to feed, as claimants, as polluters, as statistics, as
incubators of disease, you are on a slippery slope. A slope that leads to
inhuman tower blocks, to old people 鈥渓ocked up in old people鈥檚 homes鈥�, to ethnic
cleansing and finally to the street children of the megacities who simply
鈥渄isappear鈥�. That is what tends to happen to people you don鈥檛 want.