Slum Appreciation Misguided  The slums of the world's megacities
have been the subject of much admiration among urban thinkers
recently. Joel Kotkin argues that adulation is misguided.  In
this piece for New Geography, Kotkin writes that for all the
positive aspects of these urban conglomerations there are many
more terrible conditions that make these types of places
undesirable.  "[E]ssentially megacities in developing countries
should be seen for what they are: a tragic replaying of the
worst aspects of the mass urbanization that occurred previously
in the West. They play to the nostalgic tendency among urbanists
to look back with fondness on the crowded cities of early 20th
Century North America and Europe. Urban boosters like the
Philadelphia Inquirer's John Timpane speak fondly about going
back to the "the way we were" - when our parents or grandparents
lived stacked in small apartments, rode the subway to work and
maintained a relatively small carbon footprint.  Unfortunately
such places were often not