“Arrival City” is a term coined by Doug Saunders in his book, where he explored the peripheries of twenty major cities to reveal the transformative power of urban migration. These peripheral neighborhoods, often dismissed as undesirable, turn out to be hubs of opportunity, where former rural residents launch businesses while maintaining strong ties to their villages of origin. Far from being problems to manage, they are vibrant motors of social and economic mobility.
Say “city outskirts,” and many of us think of a chaotic sprawl with patchwork houses and neglected streets filled with activities not always legal. But what if these fringes often ignored were actually where the future is being built? Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders traveled to the borders of around twenty world cities for his book Arrival City. What he found wasn’t despair, but potential.
Take Liu Gong Li, a rapidly growing settlement on the outskirts of Chongqing, China. Or Tower Hamlets in London, once a dense Bangladeshi immigrant enclave. These enclaves, located at the edges of megalopolises and beyond the tourist maps, are products of the great final migration: the movement of millions from countryside to city in search of better lives. Instead of seeing these new communities as cancerous growth, we should recognize the potential they hold.
Families move in by choice. They invest their savings, tap into support networks from home, and launch stable and viable businesses that can lift entire neighborhoods. The thriving economy of these urban spaces would generate a new middle class, as many of today’s affluent city districts were once immigrant enclaves.
These informal settlements also sit at a crossroads between two worlds. They maintain strong ties to the villages people came from, sometimes sending back more effective support than formal international aid ever could. And they are propelled by the pull of the central city, which offers jobs, education, and a chance for the next generation to take a step forward. While new migrants settle in these “waiting rooms”, others move out to the great city, creating a constant flow and renewal.
Saunders urges us to let go of the romantic perception of rural life. In reality, poverty, limited opportunity, and lack of services make the countryside one of the most dangerous environments for human survival. By contrast, even the most chaotic urban peripheries may be a life improvement, bringing education, health care, income to former rural populations. When children are no longer needed as guaranteed labor, birth rates naturally fall. Metropolitan fringe development is, therefore, a far more effective way to slow population growth than the simple merger of rural villages to larger municipalities.
What makes arrival cities so dynamic is the entrepreneurial energy of their residents. Far from being passive victims of circumstance, these former farmers see urban life as a pathway upward, and they work hard to seize the opportunities it offers. Compared to the archaic and stagnant life of the countryside, this urban grind offers an optimistic vision of urban peripheries.
But for arrival cities to truly work, they need one essential ingredient: access to the city center. If newcomers are shut out of central urban life through restrictive rules, discrimination, or impossible commutes, the ladder of mobility breaks. Open pathways into the city are what allow these neighborhoods to become launchpads instead of dead ends. Additionally, as countries mature and their rural landscapes evolve, we may even see thriving rural regions shaped by return migration and investment.
