![]() These gangs may become actors in slum governance, as in South Africa’s townships or Brazil’s favelas, where for instance, gangs in the Cidade de Deus favela in Rio de Janeiro imposed a curfew. The governance vacuum is sometimes filled by what (maybe too easily) is referred to as ‘gangs’. Church leaders, for instance, are often community liaisons and powerful brokers when slum dwellers distrust government intervention - in Ghana, traditional leaders disbanded all mass gatherings and funerals in the light of the pandemic. Non-state organisations or resident-led initiatives tend to step in, often responding to basic needs and in the process setting up a bottom-up, networked governance system. Second, the absence of formal governance in informal settlements does not equal a lack of governance. However, it is not inconceivable that this silence is the result of the contentious relationship between city authorities and people living in informal settlements. This may due to the uncertainty surrounding almost every aspects of the virus as well as the difficulties associated with defining and implementing an effective response. Indeed, favelas, barrios, slums and shantytowns seem to be the Achilles heel of many health systems, yet, political leaders in low- and middle-income countries have largely been silent about how they plan to face this significant but extremely important challenge. The lingering impact of spatial distinctions and historical differences (particularly those related to the Civil War) linger in Southern cities, but exceptionalism is a fading characteristic.The question is, how can outbreaks of COVID-19 in informal settlements in the South be prevented from triggering even wider shocks? Informal settlements, in addition to making up not a substantial proportion of urban populations, also present all the conditions for rapid spread: very high population density, scant access to water and sanitation, widespread poverty and inadequate health infrastructure. Young people left the rural areas and small towns of the South for the larger cities to find work in the postindustrial economy and, for the first time in over a century, the urban South received migrants in appreciable numbers from other parts of the country and the world. The civil rights movement after 1950, with many of its most dramatic moments focused on the South’s cities, loosened the connection between Southern city and region as cities chose development rather than the stagnation that was certain to occur without a moderation of race relations. But the dislocations triggered by World War II and the billions of federal dollars poured into Southern urban infrastructure and industries generated hope among civic leaders for a postwar boom. Southern cities were more successful in legalizing the South’s culture of white supremacy through legal segregation and the memorialization of the Confederacy. City boosters aggressively sought and subsidized industrial development, but a poorly educated labor force and the scarcity of capital restricted economic development. Factories were often located in small towns and did not typically contribute to urbanization. ![]() The South participated in the industrial revolution primarily to the extent of processing crops. The devastation of the Civil War rendered the ties between city and country in the South even tighter. ![]() The institution of slavery and an economy emphasizing commercial agriculture hewed the countryside close to the urban South, not only in economics, but also in politics. ![]() Still, the aspirations of urban Southerners differed little from their Northern counterparts in the decades before the Civil War. The Southern colonies did indeed sprout towns, but these were places of planters’ residences, planters’ enslaved Africans, and the plantation economy, an axis that would persist through the antebellum period. The distinctions had more to do with the varying objectives of these colonial settlements and the geography of deep-flowing rivers in the South than with any philosophical predilections. While colonial New Englanders gathered around town commons, settlers in the Southern colonials sprawled out on farms and plantations.
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