The Beauty of Slums

 

Journalist Doug Saunders opened his discussion of what he has termed “arrival cities” with a mention of the American city that best epitomizes the phenomenon: Los Angeles.

“I lived here until nine years ago, so it’s interesting to see how the city’s changed,” said Saunders, the European bureau chief and award-winning columnist for Toronto’s Globe and Mail. “I spoke to one sociologist who said that Los Angeles flushes out half its populations every 10 years.”

Saunders described arrival cities as “the lowest forms of urban living,” the crowded areas at the edges …