Hold the prawns

Abstract

[from introduction]: In the cities of the global South elites are often desperate to repress the reality of the shack settlement. Maps are printed in which shack settlements appear as blank spaces, laws are passed that assume that everyone can afford to live formally and, in the name of order and development, the poor are beaten out of the cities. The great elite fantasy is the creation of 'world class cities' – shiny, securitised nowherevilles in which the poor understand that their place is to live in some peripheral ghetto and only come into the city as menial workers. But from City of God to Slum Dog Millionaire and now District 9 cinema has put the shack settlement in the mall and at the heart of how Rio, Bombay and Johannesburg feature in the global imagination.