Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer. Late in the afternoon the sun slanted down into the mossy yard belonging to Francie Nolan's house,...

"In Bangalore, India, five young women fight to save their homes, which are really only shacks and lean-tos, in a slum named "Heaven," which the city wants to bulldoze in order to accommodate its growing tech industry"-- Welcome to Heaven, a thirty-year-old slum hidden between brand-new high-rise apartment buildings and technology incubators in contemporary Bangalore, one of India's fastest-growing cities. The community is made up of women, mothers...

"The UN's Millennium Development Target to improve the lives of 100 million 'slum' dwellers has been inappropriately communicated as a target to free cities of slums. ... [The book] traces the proliferation of this misunderstanding across several African countries, and explains how current urban policy ... encourages this interpretation. The cases it presents cover a range of conflicts between poor urban residents and the local and national authorities...