Study Guide in GEOGRAPHY 3- URBAN GEOGRAPHY Module 3: CHAPTER 3: URBAN POVERTY AND

DISORDER

MODULE NO. 3

CHAPTER 3:

URBAN POVERTY AND DIS(ORDER)

MODULE OVERVIEW

For economic and demographic reasons, during the 1980s and 1990s poverty has
become increasingly concentrated in urban settlements. Economic crisis and structural
adjustment policies introduced in the Third World have had a disproportionate impact
on the urban poor, due to rising food prices, declining real wages and redundancy in the
formal labor market, and reduced public expenditure on basic services and
infrastructure. As a result of rapid urbanization, within the next two decades the
proportion of the world’s population living in towns and cities is set to overtake the
proportion living in rural areas for the first time. Thus, the numbers of urban people in
poverty are likely to be g rowing at a faster rate – and in parts of the world are already
greater in absolute terms– than the numbers of poor rural people. Whereas in 1980 there
were twice as many poor rural households as poor urban ones, by the year 2000 more
than half of the absolute poor will live in towns and cities.
While the global demographic shift to urban areas is undisputed, predictions
about the urbanization of poverty are based on a multitude of controversial assumptions
regarding the definition of urban areas, the nature of poverty and our capacity to
measure it. Analysis of the problems of the “urban poor” often glosses over, or
disregards, these important facts. Rarely is the meaning of poverty (and the criteria used
to identify the poor) made explicit, or the usefulness of urban poverty as a distinct
conceptual category challenged.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Intended Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this chapter, the students should be able to:

define urban poverty and disorder;
discuss on heterogeneity of cities; and
define and respond to urban dis(order).

LEARNING CONTENTS

I. WHAT IS POVERTY?

Most definitions associate poverty with a “lack” or

“deficiency” of the necessities required for human survival
and welfare. However, there is no consensus about what basic
human needs are or how they can be identified. Two main
approaches are discussed here: conventional economic
definitions which use income, consumption, or a range of
other social indicators to classify poor groups against a
common index of material welfare; and alternative interpretations developed largely by rural
anthropologists and social planners working with poor rural communities in the Third World,
which allow for local variation in the meaning of poverty, and expand the definition to encompass
perceptions of non-material deprivation and social differentiation.

A. Conventional Definitions

1. Definitions based on income or consumption

Income is defined as command over resources over time or as the level of consumption that
can be afforded while retaining capital intact. People are classified as poor when their income (or
consumption) is less than that required to meet certain defined needs. For example, the World
Bank’s World Development Report uses two income cut-off points or poverty lines: those with an
income per capita of below US$ 370 per year (at 1985 purchasing power parity) are deemed poor,
while those with less than US $275 per year are extremely poor.
Income-defined poverty lines are problematic for a number of reasons. Income is a useful
indicator if we want to identify which people are likely to lack the resources to achieve a socially
acceptable standard of living. However, it does not measure accurately their capacity to achieve
access (which may be influenced by other factors such as education, information, legal rights,
illness, threatened domestic violence or insecurity).

2. Absolute and relative definitions of poverty

If poverty is defined in absolute terms, needs are considered to be fixed at a level which

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provides for subsistence, basic household equipment, and expenditure on essential services such as
water, sanitation, health, education and transport. The absolute definition is in common use by the
World Bank and governments. However, it does not describe the extent of income inequality
within society nor the fact that needs are socially determined and change over time. The absolute
definition has to be adjusted periodically to take account of technological developments such as
improved methods of sanitation.
The concept of relative poverty is more flexible, and allows for minimum needs to be
revised as standards of living in society alter. It reflects the view that poverty imposes withdrawal
or exclusion from active membership of society: people are relatively deprived if they cannot
obtain “... the conditions of life – that is the diets, amenities, standards and services – which allow
them to play the roles, participate in the relationships and follow the customary behaviour which is
expected of them by virtue of their membership of society.”

3. Definitions based on social indicators

Because many aspects of well-being cannot be captured adequately by income or
consumption-based measures, supplementary social indicators are sometimes used to define
poverty, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, nutrition, the proportion of the household budget
spent on food, literacy, school enrolment rates, access to health clinics or drinking water.

B. Participatory Definitions

Standardized definitions are useful to policy makers because they provide a uniform scale
against which comparisons can be made of the incidence of poverty in different sub-populations
(urban and rural; urban populations living in different parts of the city; male and female headed
households; old and young, etc.) or of the same population over time. Comparative data are
essential in order to target resources to the poorest groups. However, the standard of living of an
individual or a household is a multi-dimensional concept involving, in principle, every aspect of
direct consumption as well as non-consumption activities and services. The quantification of
poverty invariably restricts the number of criteria used to describe it, so that the data provide only a
partial picture of the reality of being poor. Attempts to use universal indicators (such as an income
defined poverty line) can also be counter- productive in masking the structural causes of poverty.

Equally important, the use of a common index implies an external decision about who is
poor. As Rahnema states: “There may be as many poor and as many perceptions of poverty as
there are human beings.” Any poverty line is inherently a subjective judgement about what is an
acceptable minimum standard of living in a particular society. While it is possible to set an
income-defined poverty line in a participatory way by asking survey respondents what they
consider to be the minimal income level necessary to make ends meet and averaging the results,
the requirement to judge each person using the same standard means that their individual definition
of their own needs is subordinated. The “poor” are labelled as poor by outsiders, not according to
their own criteria.

Anthropological studies of poverty have shown that people’s own conceptions of

disadvantage often differ markedly from those of professional “experts”. Great value may be
attached to qualitative dimensions such as independence, security, self-respect, identity, close and
nonexploitative social relationships, decision-making freedom, and legal and political rights. This
has led Francis and others to argue that to obtain an adequate definition of poverty requires
involvement of the “poor” themselves.

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The genesis of gender planning during the 1980s has focused attention on the different
poverty outcomes deriving from the socially constructed roles and responsibilities of women and
men, and the gender relations between them. Socially constructed roles also constrain the
opportunities of other population sub-groups – such as the young and old, ethnic minorities and
majorities, recent rural migrants and established urban residents, and diff e rent social classes – and
their experience and perceptions of poverty are differentiated accordingly.

From the 1970s, the conventional view that poverty can be defined in terms of income has
been further challenged on the grounds that the environmental consequences of economic growth
result in reduced human welfare, and that “traditional” frugal and self-reliant lifestyles are not
inferior.

1. Vulnerability and entitlement

Participatory investigations have highlighted two concepts – vulnerability and entitlement –
which add rigor to the conceptualization of poverty and greatly extend our understanding of the
process by which people become and remain poor.
Vulnerability is not synonymous with poverty, but means defenselessness, insecurity and
exposure to risk, shocks and stress. It is linked with assets, such as human investment in health and
education, productive assets including houses and domestic equipment, access to community
infrastructure, stores of money, jewelry and gold, and claims on other households, patrons, the
government and the international community for resources in times of need. While poverty
(measured by income) can be reduced by borrowing, such debt makes the poor more vulnerable.
Chambers points out that poor people have a horror of debt, and are more aware than professionals
of the trade-offs between poverty and vulnerability. Failure to distinguish between the two
concepts is harmful because it prevents disaggregation of the experience of poverty and maintains
stereotypes about the undifferentiated mass of the poor. An understanding of how people deplete
household assets or resources is helpful in explaining how the well-being of urban households can
decline, even when there are improvements in labor market or production opportunities.
Entitlement refers to the complex ways in which individuals or households command
resources. These ways vary between people and over time, in response to shocks and long-term
trends. They may include wage labor, sale of assets, own production, reduced consumption and
public provision of goods and services. Although the concept of entitlement was originally applied
in the rural sector to the study of famine and hunger, it is useful in explaining how poverty affects
different people – even within the same household – in different ways. This disaggregation is
central to the analysis of household survival strategies during periods of stress, and their
implications for the work burdens of women, men and children and intra-household resource
allocation.
Participatory investigation is useful in identifying what increases the risk of poverty and the
underlying reasons why people remain in poverty. It allows diff e rent types of poverty to be
distinguished by drawing on the life experience of poor people. An in-depth understanding of the
process by which people become deprived is not an inferior substitute for a large - scale exercise to
quantify poverty: it is a pre-requisite to devising antipoverty programs which address root causes
of poverty and meet people’s perceived needs. Not least, concentrating on poor people’s priorities
challenges a dominant view of the poor as passive or irresponsible, and the patronizing assumption
of experts that poor people are there to be planned for.

Certain characteristics of poverty are closely identified with urbanization. These attributes
of urban poverty can be grouped into four interrelated are as:
1. Urban environmental and health risks.
2. Vulnerability arising from commercial exchange.

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3. Social diversity, fragmentation and crime.

4. Vulnerability arising from the intervention of the state and police.

Urban Poverty: Meaning, Measurement and Policy Implications

Meaning of urban poverty Implications for measurement Implications for urban
poverty programs
Conventional economic Quantitative approach, using a Focus on redistribution at the
definition: poverty is a lack of common scale of macro level. Increase urban
income (or consumption), measurement (usually a productivity and incomes
defined in absolute or relative poverty line based on through job creation; deal with
terms. household budget surveys); residual poverty through
measurement of the extent of transfer payments, social
poverty (number affected) and safety nets, subsidies on basic
the depth of poverty (how far items.
incomes are below the poverty
line).
Participatory social Qualitative analysis of the Focus on micro-level support
development definition: processes underlying poverty to enable individuals to
poverty is multi-faceted and and the ways in which poverty participate socially and
its definition varies between affects different subgroups economically and strengthen
individuals. among “the poor” (such as their ability to stay out of
young and old people, women poverty. May include
and men, different household community-level interventions
types, castes and ethnic to strengthen health,
groups). Uses a range of education, communications,
“bottom-up” participatory credit for small enterprises,
methods such as focus groups, people’s capacity to make
life histories, wealthranking decisions affecting their own
and mapping to examine lives, political participation
people’s perceptions of and legal literacy;
poverty, vulnerability, and decentralization of decision-
intra-household and making to local levels (the
community level entitlements. poor know best how to use
resources in their own
neighbourhoods); and the
differentiation of special needs
of particular groups among
“the poor”.
Integrated development Quantitative and qualitative Holistic, integrated approach
approach: causes of poverty assessments are to urban development and
are interlinked (environment, complementary. poverty alleviation –
housing, health, income Quantification includes social redistribute resources to
generation, education etc.) and indicators such as life provide for basic needs of the
must be tackled in a expectancy, incidence of poor, coordinating
coordinated way. disease, education levels, as interventions in primary health
well as income and care, water and sanitation,
expenditure. Need to pollution control, housing,
understand the spatial income generation, education,

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distribution of poverty at the crime control, domestic

citywide level in order to violence, leisure facilities.
target resources at the poorest Acknowledge linkages
groups; within poor areas, between national economic
need to understand priorities and social policies and
of different sub-groups. poverty in urban and rural
areas.

2. UNRULY CITIES: THE HETEROGENEITY OF

CITIES

ACTIVITY 1.1 Read the further excerpts from Claire

Etcherelli’s Elise or The Real Life in Reading 1A at the
end of this chapter. While you are reading, think
particularly about what Paris—and its different
neighborhoods, such as Port d`Italie and Stalingrad—
might have been like to live in.
In these stories, we can see that the city of Paris juxtaposes different feelings (Allen,
1999a). Here we can see Arezki’s fearful watching out for cops. And how the lovers’ happiness
transformed the streets. Further, we can also see how, when confronted by the heterogeneity of
Parisian people, Elise turns away and tends to caricature them: ‘alcoholics, idlers, tubercular,
degenerates’. Though not indifferent to their plight, Elise cannot see them as individuals.
‘Cityness’—Paris life—seems to prevent people from being seen as individuals. Instead, they are
‘caricatures of humanity, in these suffering bodies mutilated by misery’. In these respects (and
more), we can see that Elise’s feelings arise from the ways in which cities are heterogeneous,
constantly mixing differences (Amin and Graham, 1999). However, the ways in which people react
to the heterogeneity of the city are not easy to predict. Even while Elise falls in love with Arezki,
the police are arresting and ‘disappearing’ Algerians, and there are murderous riots. Sure, city life
can lead some people to be indifferent or more tolerant, but it can also intensify racist hatred
It is not just people of different ethnicities and sexes whom Paris brings together, though.
You can see how Etcherelli records, with some bitterness, the social polarities that exist between
classes in 1950s’ Paris. Social polarities come in other forms too: Elise, herself, at the same time
that she feels sympathy with social outcasts also feels disgusted by drunks. And these social
polarities are mapped into social geography of the city. There are distinct neighborhoods in Paris—
and these are racialized: ‘Algerian, Spanish, Portuguese, and naturally, French’.
Clearly, the city brings different people together and mixes them up. Paradoxically,
however, the city is also a machine for producing differences amongst people—differences which
then become the basis on which they are kept apart from one another. In this story, Algerians arrive
in Paris because they have links through French imperial connections. Once they are there, they are
classified as foreigners and potential terrorists—and, therefore (dangerously) different. And they
come to live in segregated parts of Paris. Like others. Like them. The question for us, in this
chapter, is how we are to understand this paradox of mixing and separation.
From our reading of Etcherelli’s account of 1950s’ Paris, it is possible to make some
preliminary observations about the heterogeneity of cities and the materiality of city life. We can
make three key points.
First, we can note from this cross-section that Paris is a city of contrasts— from what we
have read, we could list alcoholics, idlers, tubercular, degenerates, writers (Etcherelli),
communists, car workers, the police, shoppers, the dead and so on. There are also many different
activities, from lovers strolling to acts of terrorism, from leisure to work. All the people, all the

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events, all the experiences, all the stillness’s and movements, all the chaos, all the dangers: it’s
often too much to take in. So, paradoxically, cities are both exhilarating and depressing, enthralling
and overwhelming. Nevertheless, these narratives point to the importance of recognizing the
differences in people’s experiences of city life.
Second, cities combine people whose experiences have very different felt intensities. The
idea of ‘felt intensities’ immediately evokes people’s subjective experiences—whether these are
about the intensity of racism, or of love, or of danger. However, there is more to the idea of ‘felt
intensities’ than this. The city is more than the backdrop for people’s feelings. Instead, the city
itself—cityness—provokes felt intensities. For example, as Etcherelli has her characters thread
their way through different parts of Paris, she brings to life the (romantic? violent? paranoid?)
intensity and (class, racial, political) diversity of the city’s street life. This brings us to the next
point.
Third, it is possible to discern from Etcherelli’s stories something of the intensification of
social relationships in cities. 1950s’ Paris does not simply contain different histories and
geographies, it also brings them together— and, in doing so, puts ‘differences’ into relation to one
another. Differences might be ignored or exaggerated, avoided or embraced. Whatever, by
concentrating and exaggerating different histories and geographies, cities intensify social
relationships. And these social relations are also power relations. Their intensification, then, can
aggravate social tensions: as workers and Algerians struggle for justice—supporting or clashing
with each other, being supported or oppressed by other classes, other nationalities. This city,
indeed, can be unruly. One consequence might be that governments impose order by diffusing the
tensions that arise from the intensification of social relations. Thus, it is possible to see why a
violent anti-colonial struggle in Algeria would provoke the authorities into excessive restrictions
on people’s —especially Arab people’s—movements through the city. Or why class struggles in
Paris might provoke urban planners into settling the working classes in estates on the urban
periphery (see Chapter 2 of this book). In this way, we can begin to see how different spaces within
the city might emerge; how it is that different histories and geographies might overlap or sit side by
side or be kept apart.

ACTIVITY 1.2 Look back over Reading 1A. This time, look for the varied experiences that Elise
and Arezki have of Paris life. Can you pick out the ways in which different groups are brought
together—or kept apart—in Paris? Think, too, about the ways in which certain relationships are
intensified, moderated or suppressed.
Sometimes, as Elise and Arezki walk from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, different
communities blend into one another and it is not at all clear where one has ended and the other
begun. Sometimes, different people occupy the same place, but simply walk past one another, not
even noticing that they are there. Other times, areas are sharply demarcated and some groups will
have nothing to do with one another. By occupying—or avoiding—certain places, Elise and Arezki
can negotiate the intensification of social relationships in certain places, either by occupying sites
of pleasure or calm, or by avoiding those where racial hatred is concentrated. However, city spaces
can rarely be mapped so clearly, so unambiguously.
Even if we take one of the clearest distinctions in the social geography of cities —between
the inner city and the suburb—we cannot be sure that one necessarily represents order and the
other disorder; one community, the other difference; one safety, the other danger. An argument that
suggests that cities are heterogeneous begs questions about the relationships between order and
disorder, community and difference, safety and danger that make different urban spaces different.
In this way, we can glimpse the way in which urban spaces are produced through the negotiation of
heterogeneity: whether people seek community or difference, whether they embrace the excitement
of urban disorder or the calm of urban orderings. More than this, we might begin to understand
how it is that the inner city and the suburb have come to be seen—and produced—as such different

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spaces within the city.

This seeks to re-interpret this social geography of the city by thinking about the ways in
which heterogeneity creates distinctive urban spaces that are constituted by the ways people
negotiate
 relationships with others
 the city’s spatial relationships (inside and out), and
 the tensions of city life.
However, the idea that the city mixes up people from different backgrounds and intensifies social
interactions—thereby becoming a place of order and disorder, community and difference, of
excitement and danger—leaves us with the question of how exactly differences between urban
spaces are produced (a question that will concern us throughout this book). Let us start our
analysis, then, with the supposedly most heterogeneous and disorderly parts of the city: the inner
city.

READING 1A
Claire Etcherelli: from Elise or the Real Life
Extract 2

‘Listen. Take the Metro to Stalingrad. All right? Get off, take a seat, and wait for me on the
platform. While you wait, read a paper folded in front of your face. If any people from here get off,
they won’t recognize you.’
I followed his directions; he joined me on the platform at Stalingrad where I had buried my
face in the front pages of my paper. This made him laugh. He tapped on the paper and said we’d go
on to Ternes.
‘It’s near the Étoile. I think it’s a good place.’
Arezki had dressed carefully. He was wearing a white shirt, a tie hidden by his scarf, and
his brown suit, shiny with wear, was spotless.
At last, I was seeing Paris by night, the Paris of postcards and calendars.
‘You like it?’
Arezki was having fun. He suggested that we walk up to l’Étoile and then come back on the
opposite sidewalk. It would be easy to lose ourselves and become a part of the scene. To feel one
had a place in this beautiful city, to be integrated…
We spent some time discussing the Magyar’s accident. We were both cold. Arezki glanced
toward the cafés as we walked. He must be worrying about their being expensive, I thought. Three
days until payday. He must be almost broke, too.
As we turned back toward Les Ternes, he said: ‘You’re cold,’ and we went into a café
whose sidewalk terrace was heated. But he preferred the interior, picked out two places and
ordered two teas. The process was always the same. Our neighbors studied us in silence for several
seconds and it was easy to guess their thoughts. I tried to say to myself: ‘So what? It’s Paris, the
city of outlaws, fugitives from all over the world. This is 1957. Am I going to come apart because
of a few stares? We are a scandal in this lovely neighbourhood. Are these people responsible?’
‘…But where are the police? Look at that guy sitting right next to you in a nice place where
you’ve made a date with a nice girl you’re going to take home in the car you’ve parked nearby…
and there’s an Arab with a French girl! She’s French and working class for sure, you can tell right
off. We’re fighting a war with those guys… Where are the police? No, we don’t want to make
them suffer; we’re human. There are camps, places they can be assigned to. Clean up Paris. Maybe
this one has a gun in his pocket. They all have.’
Every one of their stares said that.

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Extract 3

When Arezki joined me at Stalingrad, he stated that we wouldn’t go to Les Ternes

anymore. It wasn’t a good neighbourhood.
‘We’re going to…the Trocadéro.’
We went to the Trocadéro.
We even returned two days later.
We walked in the gardens where the freezing fog raised protective walls around us.
We went to the Opéra and circled the building several times.
We crossed the bridges.
We lost ourselves on the streets around Saint-Paul.
We walked up the boulevards toward Saint-Augustin.
Starting at Vaugirard, we ended up at the Porte d’Auteuil. The Rue de Rivoli we did in both
directions.
And the Boulevard Voltaire, and the Boulevard du Temple, and the little streets behind the
Palais-Royale.
And La Trinité and the Rue Lafayette.
We never returned to the same neighbourhood.
The smallest incident, a gathering of people, the shadow of a police car, someone who
seemed to be following us, and our walk was abruptly ended.
We had to part, to go home separately.
These interrupted evenings, our conversations cut short, and the anxiety —never knowing,
leaving him behind, waiting until the next day to find out if anything serious had happened—these
bound me to him in that well-known way where the more fleeting the thing, the dearer it is. He saw
police everywhere. I thought he exaggerated. I protested a bit when he’d say: ‘Look. See that guy
in front of the window. He’s a cop. You don’t believe me? I tell you it’s so.’
‘So what? What does it matter?’
We continued our walk. There were lots of police raids.
Arezki dreaded them. ‘But you don’t break any laws.’
‘You think that satisfies them?’ And the next night, we changed neighborhoods.
I asked no questions. Time passed, we met almost every day. I tried to address him as ‘tu’,
for he became angry one night at my continual ‘vous’. I loved to hear him talk. His tongue made a
soft little roll when he pronounced his ‘r’s’. We passed from serious to gay, we made fun of our
friends on the assembly line. I told him about Lucien’s youth, I often talked of Grandmother. She
had become familiar to him; he knew her faults, her expressions, her manias. Mustapha,
Grandmother, Lucien—these people who made up our company helped us to discover each
other. Out of shyness, we made use of them to talk about ourselves. One evening, we were walking
in the gardens of the Trocadéro. We found a hole in the shadows and Arezki kissed me violently.
With my new ideas, I thought, this is it, now he’s going to take me to his room. But nothing
happened. Our understanding was miraculous: anyone else would have been more impatient, more
audacious.
If he wasn’t, it was because to the difficult circumstances that already hampered us had
been added the calculated pleasure of our moving forward together. We observed each other for a
long time with growing tenderness. In front of others, we feigned indifference, that game where the
smallest gesture, a blink of the eye, an inflection of the voice, takes on intense meaning. Each time
we separated, Arezki swore me to secrecy, which annoyed me a little. Actually, it suited me
perfectly. Rain, sleet, we walked. Paris was an enormous ambush through which we moved with
ludicrous precautions. Our love heightened the background of our wanderings. Nothing was ugly.
The rain polished the pavement and the lone light of an alley made a prism of the shimmering

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stones. The squares had a provincial charm and the broken-down sheds took on the look of old
abandoned windmills. Our happiness transformed Paris.

Extract 4

‘Here’s Paris.’ The cloth tears. The countryside and the soft wind in the trees, anticipating
the summer to come, prolonged still further the funeral ceremony and its capacity to appease. But
here begins the city’s overflow. A clock marks the time. The streets are rectilinear and without
mystery. The horizon now is a fragment of sky between the many buildings. It is decidedly blue. It
is going to be hot, and the women are wearing dresses without collars or sleeves. Some Arabs are
digging a sidewalk. Once we’ve passed the viaduct at Auteuil, the traffic grows heavier. This is
Paris. Delivery trucks, trailer trucks, buses, it’s the start of a day. From the Porte de Versailles, we
move slowly and I examine the people on the sidewalk to my right, as if they could answer my
questions. It’s because here, in the noise of the city, in its colors and mixtures, I’ve found Arezki
again.
Now the buildings of the ‘Cité Universitaire’. The red brick of their walls reminds me of
the English colleges, the way they looked in my brother’s school books. Between two pavilions, a
garden gives to the whole a quality of fullness. Lecture halls, rooms from which it must be possible
to see the distant roses amidst the green…because of that, because of the old stones and a few
students walking toward the boulevard, I tell myself that Arezki risks nothing. Further along,
coming out of the Moroccan pavilion, a boy yawns, his collar open. He stretches his free arm. And
even if Arezki didn’t come back, I’d rouse Paris. There are lawyers, newspapers. A man’s life, that
matters here. A few would rise up to cry out, protest, make demands. The 28th of May was not a
dream.
At the Porte de Gentilly, the road goes gently downhill. The concrete of the stadium steps is
blinding in the sun. On a sign, I read ‘Poterne des Peupliers’. It reminds me of gallows. Articles 76
and 78: ‘Attack on the internal and external security…’ They won’t let go all that fast.
We pass a monument made of white stones: ‘TO FRENCH MOTHERS’. The homage, the
veneration, they come later, when it’s too late. The slope flattens out toward the Place d’ Italie. I
know it too well; I barely look to the left toward this old whore of a factory where I read the
inscription ‘Automobiles; Woodworking machines’. I feel as if the unnerving noise of the
assembly line were reaching out for me. I smell the warm metal.
When we begin the descent towards Charenton, the vibrating motions of the car—the
boulevard is being repaired—throw me from hope back to anguish. And memories are mixed in as
we pass the square of La Limagne. Arezki used to say ‘de la Limace’. He also said: ‘Le Mont de
Pitié’, and I loved this last word.
On the Pont National, at the sight of the water, I think about the bodies that float under it.
Bodies that are thrown in on nights of big riots, in the paroxysm of hatred; the bodies of the weak
who have talked too much and whom death punishes. Out of place in this area, L’ Auberge du
Régal watches those passes whom no red light stops.
On the Boulevard Poniatowski, buildings rise to circle Paris with their pre-war ugliness.
Unfriendly houses with rough façades, dull stones, shapeless doorways, large interior courts no sun
could ever reach; their lives the workers’ aristocracy aspiring to the bourgeoisie. Crushed and
constricted by indifference, by new ideas, what price the life of an Arab here? The love of order
oozes from these buildings. He’s been sent away, sent back into the war. I could cry, but who
would hear me? If he’s alive, where is he? If he’s dead, where is his body? Who will tell me?
You’ve taken his life, yes, but what have you done with his body? At the Porte de Vincennes, the
boulevard comes to an end and a vast housing project takes over: new apartment buildings with
terraces shaded by blue and orange awnings. They suggest hot afternoons where you drink from
frosted glasses while listening to a record. Who will think of Arezki?

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Henri slows down still more. We’re behind a truck that belches its exhaust. Montreuil is at
my right and the Rue d’ Avron opposite. The stalls of les Halles challenge a painter’s palette. The
rows of fruit, the pyramids of vegetables tear the fabric of my hopes. In front of the mounds of
garden produce, thousands of ants’ act as a rampart before the displays.
On the hill between Bagnolet and Les Lilas, the car struggles between two buses. A road
gang at the Porte de Ménilmontant is taking time off for a drink. Tomorrow, one of them won’t be
back and fifty will appear to pick up his shovel. There are so many, there are too many,
inexhaustible reserves, forever replenished.
After Les Lilas, on the curve going down toward the Pré-Saint-Gervais, you see before you
Aubervilliers, pale in the heat haze. On the barren esplanade, a curious solitary church attracts me.
But now Henri is driving very fast and it’s only after the Porte de Pantin that we reach the slums of
that other Paris that comes to Paris only for the 28th of May. Not dangerous, easy to control, easy
to satisfy. We enter the tunnel under the Porte de la Villette. I have a presentiment that I will never
see Arezki again.
Source: from Heron, ed., 1993, pp. 225–31

3. DEFINING AND RESPONDING TO

URBAN DISORDER

The concepts of order and disorder applied

to urban and territorial issues involve complex
definitions, and to understand them it is worth
referring to some facts.

Cultivated land shows us a tidy territory, and it is

immediately understood that this comes directly down from the organization of agricultural
production, from the techniques used and the social relations characterizing farming work. The
orography of the territory, too, with the crops compatible with the different heights above sea-
level, serves the purpose of spatial design; its appearance, colors and scents change with the
change of seasons or the change in production and technology adopted. Basically, there is a
“strength”, agricultural pro-duction, with very limited alternatives, giving particular spatial
solutions. “Dry walls”, which surround fields or enclosures and which we marvel at, are also a
rational and reasonable solution for the use of stones unearthed by the plough; land reclamation
gives substance to spatial construction. Just as canals and ditches serve the purpose of taking water
where needed, while rows of trees consolidate their banks, and lanes and farm-roads aim at the
movement of men, animals and machinery, depending on the need.
Spatial order in the country, often admired, is the result of a need; it satisfies that expressed
by production which presents very limited alternatives. Change is not excluded (crop variation,
agrarian science achievements, use of new technologies, etc.); the point may even be reached of
building a new agrarian landscape with order that is different. Cultural movements linked with
tradition some-times oppose these changes, harming the intrinsic nature of the agrarian landscape,
which is destined to change. Needs and reduced alternatives may be considered key categories in
determining the agrarian landscape, but we are not dealing with two categories that could be
imagined to be playing the same role in determining the urban landscape.
In the city it is not possible to pick out such a binding, decisive need, or, rather, there is a
great number of highly diversified needs and they express in homogeneous content and
justification; not only, but they are needs that are not compelling like in the country, as each one is

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compatible with various alternatives, therefore with different models of urban organization. The
urban condition is characterized not by the absence of production but, rather, by the organization of
this production, by a greater presence of functions, greater unnaturalness of the con-text, the
existence of functions integrated with each other and, at the same time, of functions that are
antagonistic or incompatible, but above all by the high concentration of people with characteristics,
projects, needs and desires that are different from each other. Differences that are also manifested
as an expression of power (economic, social, cultural, political, institutional, etc.) able to leave a
footprint on urban organization).

Urban organization actually undergoes the effects of continuous alternation between order
and disorder. In the context in which the two concepts will be used in this paper it is not possible to
imagine them as alternatives, but they are taken as dialectically constituting territorial reality.
“Order” and “disorder” oppose each other but do not clash with each other. In the hectic
organization of urban and territorial reality one stimulates the other and each, in opposing,
determines change. What we mean to say is that the inclination towards order (or tendency towards
order) tends, on the one hand, to “repair” the disorder but, on the other, brings out the conditions
for disorder to show itself again and materialize with its problems but with the vitality implicit in
change.
Order and disorder are closely linked with each other, one producing the other in a circular
process. They are like Siamese twins: one takes pains to find the most comfortable position for
itself, but this does not mean it is comfortable for the other, too; the latter reacts and achieves a
more comfortable position for itself but uncomfortable for the other. This metaphor might make
clear how the dynamic relation between order and disorder is continuous, not linear and may never
find a point of stability.
The dialectic of the Siamese twins applied to the relation order/disorder is easy to share, but
in fact presents a large number of aporias and many consequences. A comfortable position for one
of the children, as we said, risks being uncomfortable for the other, and when the former achieves a
better position, it affects that of the other child. No position exists that meets the demands of both.
On the one hand, imposed order presupposes within itself a principle of stability; we could
say that the enforcement of order does not have aims that are just immediate but also future ones,
but, as has been seen, this claim appears to be contradicted by the character of the territorial
processes that are by nature dynamic, featuring changes and movements not always predictable.
The economic, social, demographic, cultural, technological and power mechanisms involving the
city and territory are of such an innovative impact that they can-not but cause change, i.e. a
challenge to the pre-existing order. But there is more, the irruption of change, namely disorder,
should be taken as positive or at least inevitable.
If we were to assume that the enforcement of order was aimed at improving the
organization of the city and territory and ultimately at improving the living conditions of those
inhabiting and “using” that territory, we would need to consider any challenge to order as a
prospective worsening of those living conditions. But it does not seem to be like this, not only
because disorder arises round those who have settled in the city or territory and use it, with the
prospect of improving their condition, but above all because the inevitable innovation, may, in
general, be considered ameliorative.
Highly complex economic, social, political and cultural designs are projected onto the city
and its transformations. It is impossible that the city be domesticated and dominated by a single
interest, even when this appears as strong, and when it avails itself of the strength of eco-nomic
and political power. The overall design always seems incoherent or, rather, is the outcome of
compromises between different interests and strong points. But from these strengths, their
compromise, their agreement or disagreement, from the conflicts, the city takes shape and gives
itself organization, a type of order. Order that seconds evolution but, at the same time, creates

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contradictions.
Obstacles to improving and renewing means and processes of territorial planning are not
thought to exist, provided improvements and renovation are able to increase the efficiency and
public effectiveness on the management of urban and territorial transformations. It is not a case of
stating an ideological position, but of the awareness that the organization of the city and territory
cannot but have a public/collective guide, able to improve the inhabitants’ living conditions.
Disorder, however it is identified, constitutes a permanent fact, inherent in the urban
condition; it is neither the result of wrong planning (sometimes also this), nor of a perverse will,
but rather of the dynamic mechanisms of the city itself. Change brings disorder but public
commitment through institutions cannot but aspire to recover a level of order, hopefully, more
advanced. The urban, precisely because of its constituent construction (social, productive and
economic variability; clash between powers and options of models of society) cannot be stable, but
the continuous recovery of “order” responds not only to functional needs, but also to ethical
options: only the “strongest” (from all points of view) know how to take advantage of disorder; the
weakest usually pay a high price. But at the same time, we should not consider all urban “order” as
positive, compared with negative disorder; there are experiences of oppressive and coercive urban
order. It is disorder that breaks up all oppressive order, and it is always disorder that determines
better levels and quality of order. Though it may be the dynamic factor of every urban condition,
we must remember that it always requires new order from which to start out again.

LEARNING POINTS

Perceptions about the nature of poverty, and the policy responses which follow from these
perceptions, are central in deciding how best to study, measure and analyze the phenomenon.
Different kinds of information are demanded by diff e rent approaches. For example, if poverty is
understood as the product of a deviant subculture, then priority might be given to identifying and
collecting information about behavioral problems such as family instability, alcoholism and drug
abuse. Alternatively, if anti-poverty policies are designed to deal with structural causes,
information would be required about not only access to employment, housing and educational
opportunities at the city level but also social and institutional structures which discriminate against
the poor at international and national levels.
Also, the analysis of urban disorder revealed that a neighborhood’s structural characteristics
matter greatly in affecting levels of disorder. Poverty was the single most important factor found to
influence the level of disorder in the neighborhoods. Disorder tends to be high not only where
levels of poverty are high but also where immigrant populations are concentrated. And regardless
of sociodemographic characteristics, neighborhoods where land use is mixed tend to have higher
levels of physical and social disorder.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

ACTIVITY AREA!

ACT. 1: MOVIE
PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 13
REVIEW
Study Guide in GEOGRAPHY 3- URBAN GEOGRAPHY Module 3: CHAPTER 3: URBAN POVERTY AND
DISORDER

Name: _________________________________ Date: _______________

Course/Year/Section: _____________________ Score: ______________

DIRECTIONS: Watch the film entitled, “Mexico City: Whose City is It?” and create your own
movie review that would reflect this chapter.

ACT. 1: Check your

understanding

Name: _________________________________ Date: _______________

Course/Year/Section: _____________________ Score: ______________

Answer the following:

1. How will you describe urban poverty?

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2. Discuss briefly the heterogeneity of cities.

3. How will you respond to urban disorder?

REFERENCES

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095624789500700118
http://cachescan.bcub.ro/27-03-2017P/559581.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309331321_Urban_disorder_and_vitality

Prepared by:

CARYL B. PARAGAS, LPT

Instructor-in-charge

ALONA JEAN D. ZACARIAS, LPT

Instructor-in-charge

Checked by:

FROILAN S. SORIANO, Ph.D

Chairperson

Recommended by:

CRISTINA L. JAVIER, Ph.D

College Dean

Approved by:

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Study Guide in GEOGRAPHY 3- URBAN GEOGRAPHY Module 3: CHAPTER 3: URBAN POVERTY AND
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ADONIS S. BAUTISTA, DBA

Campus Executive Director

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