Informal Urbanism and the Taste for Slums

Abstract

This paper explores the aesthetics and politics of slum tourism - what are the attractions and what are the dangers of aestheticizing poverty? We first present eleven images of slums and informal urbanism in south and Southeast Asia and suggest a complex mix of attractions for Western tourists. On the one hand informal urbanism can be picturesque with elements of nostalgia and a quest for authenticity; on the other is the shock of the real, the spectacle of intensive labyrinthine urbanity and an uneasy voyeurism. We suggest the attraction is more the anxious and awe-filled pleasure of the sublime than any formal beauty. The paper then changes scale to connect such imagery to the political ec..