Urban scholars have known for a long time that urbanization was going to take place around the world.  However, what they did not anticipate was how incredibly fast urbanization was going to move throughout the entire world.  Mike Davis writes in his book, Plant of the Slums, that in 1950 there were only about eighty-six cities that had populations that exceeded one million people.  In today’s world there are approximately four hundred cities that have populations of over one million people.  Davis also emphasizes, that well cities all over the world are growing in population, it is mostly the developing world that is experiencing enormous population growth.   

            As a result of the population boom in many developing world cities, a housing crisis has been created.  There is simply not enough housing for all of the new urban dwellers, most of who are coming in from the rural, countryside hoping to escape poverty.  Since there is not enough efficient housing in many of today’s developing world cities, slums have become the place for most of the city’s poor to live.  Often times slums have no electricity, running water, or basic public health facilities such as the slum I visited in India.

            Unfortunately, because the people of slums are poor and inconsequential to country politics, they are often moved against their will whenever the government feels it necessary.  Donald Seekins writes in his article, The State and the City: 1988 and the transformation of Rangoon, that more then 450,00 people of Yangon, Myanmar have been uprooted from their urban homes and moved out to the outskirts of town where new slums can form.  This is not an unusual case because most people seem to forget or don’t care that slum-dwellers also have lives that revolve around living in one area of town.    

            Even though slums often do not provide even the most basic living necessities and the dwellers are often given fewer rights, they are frequently the leading vernacular spaces in an urban area.  Interestingly, slums are usually found in global cities, and are usually a world away from western global culture.  From my experience in the Indian slum, the people from the area, who I met, seemed to retain much more of the Indian culture then the wealthy Indian family that I stayed with in the second part of my India visit.  Part of this may because these people have very few resources and little access to modern day technology.

            While slums in the developing world are usually large vernacular spaces, they are not the only place where the vernacular exists.  In fact vernacular spaces can be found in any city around the world, even in Madrid, Spain.  Simply looking at the architecture of Spanish buildings a person can see vernacular spaces.  However, there does seem to be a shift to a more transnational culture in many western cities.  For example, there were dozens of to-go Starbucks Coffee shops lining the Madrid streets.

Another example of the shift in culture is that vernacular culture is increasingly being transformed into transnational entertainment.  For example, Mary Crain writes in her article, The Pilgrimage to the Shrine of El Rocio, about a sacred religious pilgrimage and celebration that takes place every year in southern Spain.  However, in recent years tourists from all over Europe have been coming to Spain to watch and take part in the celebration.  One tourist company even used the slogan, “Return to Tradition,” to get people to come to the religious ceremony.  It seems to me, that the vernacular tradition in Spain could be destroyed if the pilgrimage becomes more of a family vacation then a religious ceremony.  

            In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly harder to tell the difference between where the vernacular ends and the transnational begins.  Slums are often thought of as vernacular spaces yet they have come to be a symbol of the transnational city, and in many places, local traditions are now becoming transnational entertainment.