Message of the Book

The message of this courageous classic book is that the benefits of development, so long promised over the past sixty years, have not come about for most people. Nor are they going to.

State-driven and market-led development models have both failed. Many countries, and their cities in particular, are collapsing into ungovernable chaotic entities under the control of warlords and mafias. Oswaldo de Rivero argues that the wealth of nations agenda must be replaced by a survival of nations agenda. In order to prevent increasing human misery and political disorder, many countries must abandon dreams of development and adopt instead a policy of national survival based on providing basic water, food and energy, and stabilizing their populations.

This much-anticipated new edition features both updated statistics and fresh material, including an essential new argument that the present global crisis is not simply economic but a much more profound crisis of the California Model: a crisis of our way of life and of our unsustainable global urban civilization.