Look around: the largest migration in human history is under way. For the first time ever, more people are living in cities than in rural areas. Between... 2007 and 2050, the world’s cities will have absorbed 3.1 billion people. Urbanization is the mass movement that will change our world during the twenty-first century, and the “arrival city” is where it is taking place.  The arrival city exists on the outskirts of the metropolis, in the slums, or in the suburbs; the American version is New York’s Lower East Side of a century ago or today’s Herndon County, Virginia. These are the places where newcomers try to establish new lives and to integrate themselves socially and economically. Their goal is to build communities, to save and invest, and, hopefully, move out, making room for the next wave of migrants. For some, success is years away; for others, it will never come at all.  As vibrant places of exchange, arrival cities have long been indicators of social health. Whether it’s Paris in 1789 or Tehran in 1978, whenever migrant populations are systematically ignored, we should expect violence and extremism. But, as the award-winning journalist Doug Saunders demonstrates, when we make proper investments in our arrival cities—through transportation, education, security, and citizenship—a prosperous middle class develops. Saunders takes us on a tour of these vital centers, from Maryland to Shenzhen, from the favelas of Rio to the shantytowns of Mumbai, from Los Angeles to Nairobi. He uncovers the stories—both inspiring and heartbreaking—of the people who live there, and he shows us how the life or death of our arrival cities will determine the shape of our future.

A powerfully argued work that combines reporting, sociology, economics, and urban studies to show how the migration of workers from villages to urban... centers has become one of the most significant forces in the world today. For the first time in history, there are now more people in the world living in cities than in rural areas, and many of them are clustering on the urban outskirts. Arrival City argues that this incredible movement of peoples, unfolding before our eyes, will be one of the most important trends in the twenty-first century. From Istanbul to Los Angeles, from Warsaw to Shenzhen, China, Doug Saunders shows how the success or failure of the immense communities forming on the fringes of traditional cities is having a profound effect on local, national, and international development.

Since the earliest settlements, people have deliberated the issues that affect their future together. This book shows how planners can guide the process... toward effective decision making and beneficial community design. This well-crafted book distills decades of community-design experience into a sound conceptual framework of value to practicing planners as well as planning students. Toker introduces field-tested tools for participatory decision making at regional, city, community, and site-specific levels.

The target of intense critical comment when it was first published in 1927, Arrogant Beggar’s scathing attack on charity-run boardinghouses remains... one of Anzia Yezierska’s most devastating works of social criticism. The novel follows the fortunes of its young Jewish narrator, Adele Lindner, as she leaves the impoverished conditions of New York’s Lower East Side and tries to rise in the world. Portraying Adele’s experiences at the Hellman Home for Working Girls, the first half of the novel exposes the “sickening farce” of institutionalized charity while portraying the class tensions that divided affluent German American Jews from more recently arrived Russian American Jews.The second half of the novel takes Adele back to her ghetto origins as she explores an alternative model of philanthropy by opening a restaurant that combines the communitarian ideals of Old World shtetl tradition with the contingencies of New World capitalism. Within the context of this radical message, Yezierska revisits the themes that have made her work famous, confronting complex questions of ethnic identity, assimilation, and female self-realization.Katherine Stubbs’s introduction provides a comprehensive and compelling historical, social, and literary context for this extraordinary novel and discusses the critical reaction to its publication in light of Yezierska’s biography and the once much-publicized and mythologized version of her life story. Unavailable for over sixty years, Arrogant Beggar will be enjoyed by general readers of fiction and be of crucial importance for feminist critics, students of ethnic literature. It will also prove an exciting and richly rewarding text for students and scholars of Jewish studies, immigrant literature, women’s writing, American history, and working-class fiction.

Set in the Ibo heartland of eastern Nigeria, one of Africa's best-known writers describes the conflict between old and new in its most poignant aspect:... the personal struggle between father and son.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a physician and researcher who dedicates himself to the pursuit of scientific truth even in the face of personal... tragedy, corruption and greed. Voted "Exceptional Recording" by Talking Books magazine.