This book investigates the many relatively unknown Egyptian cities, which research has largely ignored. It seeks to enhance the livability of urban areas and stop the processes that turn residents into anti-utopians and their cities into dystopias. It examines urbanization patterns in what are currently rural or informal settlements. It draws on concepts from Western and Arabic thought concerning idealism and utopianism, linking anti-utopianism with ideas such as loss of hope and residents right to the city. It also investigates the epistemology and methodology of urban design, using the descriptive-analytical approach to evaluate methods of self-criticism to address the problems and enhance urban planning and design. The literature regarding ten-minute neighborhoods is reviewed, along with a comparative content analysis of online articles, and the resultant principles are tested through site observation. It is found that happiness can be promoted by the principle of ten-minute pedestrian access to essential services, which can viably guide the reformation of urban planning. This work recommends that urban planning should be based on the ten-minute neighborhood, thus improving the future prospects of utopianism in Egypts unknown cities. Recently, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was a definite human crisis that emerged in the Egyptian cities at the level of local urban communities, which reflects on the whole city and the attached ones. The problem seems to be in the transformation of some urban sites in the metropolitan [and small] cities to become dystopian places, regarding the dynamic impact of the anti-utopian people. The concept of anti-utopians stands as an intermediate step between livable cities and dystopian communities through the transformation that occurs due to the lack of strategic plans by the administrators and/or the experts, with a special mention to the plans for poor people. Therefore, from our perspective, there is an urgent need to say that the majority of Egyptian cities should be declared as domains of humanitarian disasters, which are caused by human hazards rather than the natural disasters, e.g. earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, whirlwinds, and hurricanes. Thus, the first/headmost city that will announce its failure in the structural and human scene will get the self-respect and worlds estimate as well.

The young people defined as "Gen Xers" in the media and popular imagination almost never include poor or working-class young adults. These young people - a huge and important part of our society - are misrepresented and silent in our national conversation. In The Unknown City, Michelle Fine and Lois Weis offer a groundbreaking, theoretically sophisticated ethnography of the lives of young adults (ages 23 to 35), based on hundreds of interviews. We discover their views on everything from the construction of "whiteness" and affirmative action to the economy, education, and new public spaces of community hope. Finally, Fine and Weis point to what is being done and what should be done in terms of national policy to improve the future of these remarkable women and men.

A look beyond design process and buildings aimed at discoveringnew ways of looking at the urban experience.

From “an exceptional storyteller,” Somewhere in the Unknown World is a collection of powerful stories of refugees who have found new lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet. All over this country, there are refugees. But beyond the headlines, few know who they are, how they live, or what they have lost. Although Minnesota is not known for its diversity, the state has welcomed more refugees per capita than any other, from Syria to Bosnia, Thailand to Liberia. Now, with nativism on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang—herself a Hmong refugee—has gathered stories of the stateless who today call the Twin Cities home. Here are people who found the strength and courage to rebuild after leaving all they hold dear. Awo and her mother, who escaped from Somalia, reunite with her father on the phone every Saturday, across the span of continents and decades. Tommy, born in Minneapolis to refugees from Cambodia, cannot escape the war that his parents carry inside. As Afghani flees the reach of the Taliban, he seeks at every stop what he calls a certificate of his humanity. Mr. Truong brings pho from Vietnam to Frogtown in St. Paul, reviving a crumbling block as well as his own family. In Yang’s exquisite, necessary telling, these fourteen stories for refugee journeys restore history and humanity to America's strangers and redeem its long tradition of welcome.

The bestselling book from two prizewinning, critically acclaimed contemporary chroniclers of San Francisco-a rich, illustrated, idiosyncratic portrait of this great city. In Spirits of San Francisco, #1 bestselling Cool Gray City of Love author Gary Kamiya joins forces with celebrated, bestselling artist Paul Madonna to take a fresh look at this one-of-a-kind city. Marrying image and text in a way no book about this city has done before, Kamiya's illuminating narratives accompany Madonna's masterful pen-and-ink drawings, breathing life into San Francisco sites both iconic and obscure. Paul Madonna's atmospheric images will awe: his wide-angle drawings offer a new perspective on the “crookedest street in the world” and vistas across the city. And Kamiya's engaging prose, accompanying each image, offers striking vignettes of this incredible city: witness his story of “Dumpville,” the bizarre community that sprang up in the 19th century on top of a massive garbage dump. Handsome and irresistible-much like the city it chronicles-Spirits of San Francisco is both a visual feast and a detailed, personal, loving, informed portrait of a beloved city.

In this treasury of Gotham's secrets--some dark, some light, and some just plain weird--there are tales of underground sex clubs, a secret tunnel in Grand Central Station, an electrocuted elephant at Coney Island, and little-known bars, cafes, hangouts, and other places to frolic.

Examines the history and nature of seemingly paranormal phenomena.