Megacities The Politics of Urban Exclusion and Violence in the Global South

This book examines the massive urbanization of the world's population. All around the world "Megacities" are becoming scenes of vast deprivation, especially in the global south. In such gigantic and dense social environments, complex sets of relationships link poverty and exclusion to urban politics, power relations and public policy. In these cities, local urban politics and policy-making is the strategic prey of violent actors. The urban poor are confronted with the challenge of dealing with their inevitable encounters with violence.Megacitiesexamines recent world-wide trends in poverty and social exclusion, urban violence and politics, and links these to the challenges faced by policy-makers and practitioners in "megacities" across the globe.

Kees Koonings is Associate Professor of Development Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Utrecht University. Dirk Kruijt is Professor of Development Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Utrecht University.

Introduction * The Rise of Megacities and the Urbanization of  Informality, Exclusion and Violence--Dirk Kruijt & Kees Koonings * Part 1: The Social Dynamics of Exclusion and Violence in Megacities * Setting the Stage: Megacity’s Violence and its Consequences in Rio de Janeiro--Janice Perlman * Coping with Urban Violence: State and Community Responses to Crime and Insecurity in Guayaquil, Ecuador--Caroline Moser * Middle Eastern Megacities: Social Exclusion, Popular Movements and the Quiet Encroachment of the Urban Poor--Asef Bayat * From Popular Movements to Drug Gangs to Militias: An Anatomy of Violence in Rio de Janeiro--Robert Gay * Part 2: Political and Policy Dimensions of Urban Exclusion and Violence * Urban Governance and the Paradox of Conflict--Jo Beall *  Shoot the Citizen, Save the Customer: Participatory Budgeting and Bare Citizenship in Porto Alegre, Brazil--Sérgio Gregório Baierle *  Urban Exclusion and the (False) Assumptions of Spatial Policy Reform in South Africa--Susan Parnell and Owen Crankshaw * Crisis of the State, Violence in the City--Mariano Aguirre * Conclusions: Governing  Exclusion and Violence in Megacities--Kees Koonings & Dirk Kruijt * About the Authors * Bibliography * Index