Transcript Making A Living And the case of the Dabbawallahs of Mumbai Will per capita income in the LDCs rise as urbanization increases, as it did.

Making A Living
And the case of the
Dabbawallahs of Mumbai
Will per capita income in
the LDCs rise as
urbanization increases, as
it did in the MDCs?
Will cities in the LDCs
serve as engines of
growth, of industry and
commerce, promoters of
law and stable
government as they did in
the MDCs?
Agglomeration Economies
“Any benefit that accrues to economic
agents as a result of having large
numbers of other agents
geographically close to them, thus
tending to lead to agglomeration (the
phenomenon of economic activity
congregating in or close to a single
location, rather than being spread out
uniformly over space).”
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/
Urbanization: Deepening and
Concentration of Socioeconomic and Spatial Inequity
Home of the upper class,
most educated, powerful
And of those eking a living
out of the informal economy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4547227.stm
MDCs vs. LDCs
Described as a more accurate portrayal than "developing”
or “Third World” countries“
Specifies that LDCs are less economically developed,
often correlating with other factors of low human well-being
and development such as low life expectancy, education
and literacy levels, often high fertility and infant mortality
Development = modern infrastructure (physical and
institutional), a move away from low value added sectors
to self-sustaining economic systems with growth in higher
value-added manufacturing and service sectors and high
standards of living
“To develop" is not the same thing as "to
develop in a western manner“
Less developed does not equal
“backwardness”
While cash income and other measures are
strongly correlated, conventional measures
miss many elements of individual, family and
community economic and general well-being
The Informal
Economy
The Informal Economy
Share of total job creation 2004 in Africa:
93%, Latin America + Caribbean 83%
Absorbs and estimated 50% of the urban
labour force (Todaro 1997)
Urban Africa 2004: 61%, Latin America +
Caribbean 40%
Manila, The Philippines
United We Can
(1995)
The social economy and
Vancouver’s Downtown
Eastside:
• Bottle Depot – 24
FT jobs
• Container collection
• BikeWorks - Happy Plants
• BinTek Computers
• WE CAN 2 (community living space for
recovering addicts)
How do you employ, and provide services to, a
population of 18 million?
MUMBAI, India (CNN) -- It's just before
9.30 in the morning in one of Mumbai's
northern suburbs, and Lalitha Pisat is
preparing lunch for her son. He's a
resident doctor, living in a hospital in the
heart of the Indian city. Three hours later,
and 60 kilometers to the south, Sanjet
Pisat will be able to tuck into the food his
mother has prepared.
These men (there are only two women) are
some of Mumbai’s 5,000 ‘Dabbawallahs’ (can
carriers)
They deliver approximately 200,000 ‘tiffins’
(lunch tins) daily through one of the world’s
most amazing delivery systems
Based on a colour code to denote the pick-up
point for the dabba, the station where it must
be unloaded, and the office to which it must be
delivered. There is also an alphanumeric code
to track deliveries.
85% are illiterate or semi-literate.
Source: New York Times
Began 1890
The men all come from the same region of Maharastra
state and, since 1968, belong to the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin
Box Supplies Charity Trust (as shareholders)
Handling 35-40 tiffins, each weighing about 2 kg, they
travel by train from squalid hovels to the north of the city.
Just like FedEx – without the bar code, computers or a
telephone. The error rate is 1 in 8 million.
They travel on the 9 car trains of the Western Railway
which carry up to 4,700 people, twice the official
capacity – rush hour densities average 15 people/square
metre in a city in which the heat and humidity levels are
always near the physical limits and the air, on a good day,
has the feel and smell of a garbage fire in a steam room.
And now they have a world-wide following
among business gurus
Microsoft has used them to distribute flyers
with the lunches, and dressed them in
branded caps and t-shirts
They’ve been invited to speak about their
work to Mercedes-Benz, Coca-Cola, and
the Stanford University Graduate School of
Business.
England’s Sir Richard Branson
accompanied them on their rounds in 2005.
The Prince of Wales met two of them
during a visit in 2003, and invited them to
his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles.
The Formal Economy of Cities
The Financial District
In Toronto, as in most large cities, the area with the highest
density—and the highest buildings—is the financial district.
Financial District – Hong Kong
Manufacturing
From import substitution
to exports to services in
Brazil:
Imports of consumer
durables
1949: 65%
1964: 2%
Manufactured exports
1960: 3%
1977: 26%
1991: 56%
São Paulo: produces nearly two-fifths
of Brazil's manufactured goods.
Pop. metro area 18+ million
Shifting to service sector