They abandon mountains or fields for an uncharted journey into a city that doesn’t want them. In post cards, they are the picturesque peasant farmer who gives character to the landscape; in the cities, they are the forgotten, left on their own to reinvent themselves.
 
In one of history’s largest mass migrations, the rural poor of the developing world are flocking to cities in overwhelming numbers, challenging already failing infrastructures to accommodate millions more hopefuls. With no more lands left for discovery, these are today’s pioneers.
 
They are converting the world’s mega cities into warrens that are 43% slums. They have each made anguished decisions to abandon the only turf they know and march their families off to an imaginary urban landscape with little more than a pocketful of dreams.
 
Cities worldwide host intricate tiers of self-constructed living, where vast seas of plastic tarps serve as roofs and rats scurry like household pets through a maze of fumes and cries and stench. Squatters settlements crop up in every imaginable place: in Egypt, squatters have long lived amidst the tombs and chambers of Cairo’s City of the Dead Cemetery; in Latin America and Asia, landfills provide endless opportunity for the newly arrived, as overnight colonies of squatters stake out claims amongst their hopes and the flies; and specifically in Peru, lowland and highland dwellers have settled amidst the chaos of Lima to chase their next meal and mold the dust of the city into futures for their kids. For now, these children will take to the streets, haunting restaurants for meager scraps and begging on corners with tiny brown hands too little to hold all that they need.
 
In many cities, the less desirable hillsides and beaches find themselves host to the shoeless arrivals whose shanties and shacks then further denude the slopes, inviting the wet-country rains to create a lethal cascade of mud, people, and belongings. Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro has launched urban reforestation programs to prevent such tragedies. Around Lima, the drier, unclaimed land easily finds itself occupied by the scratch-dirt poor who slip into place with pre-dawn stealth.