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.

In this fascinating glimpse into the world of urban exploration, Moses Gates describes his trespasses in some of the most illustrious cities in the world from Paris to Cairo to Moscow. Also, exclusive to this e-book, are firsthand accounts from the author's fellow travelers and family. Gates is a new breed of adventurer for the 21st century. He thrives on the thrill of seeing what others do not see, let alone even know exists. It all began quite innocuously. After moving to New York City and pursuing graduate studies in Urban Planning, he began unearthing hidden facets of the city—abandoned structures, disused subway stops, incredible rooftop views that belonged to cordoned-off buildings. At first it was about satiating a nagging curiosity; yet the more he experienced and saw, the more his thirst for adventure grew, eventually leading him abroad. In this memoir of his experiences, Gates details his travels through underground canals, sewers, subways, and crypts, in metropolises spanning four continents. In this finely-written book, Gates describes his immersion in the worldwide subculture of urban exploration; how he joined a world of people who create secret art galleries in subway tunnels, break into national monuments for fun, and travel the globe sleeping in centuries-old catacombs and abandoned Soviet relics rather than hotels or bed-and-breakfasts. They push each other further and further—visiting the hidden side of a dozen countries, discovering ancient underground Roman ruins, scaling the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges, partying in tunnels, sneaking into Stonehenge, and even finding themselves under arrest on top of Notre Dame Cathedral. Ultimately, Gates contemplates why he and other urban explorers are so instinctively drawn to these unknown and sometimes forbidden places—even (and for some, especially) when the stakes are high. Hidden Cities will inspire readers to think about the potential for urban exploration available for anyone, anywhere—if they have only the curiosity (and nerve!) to dig below the surface to discover the hidden corners of this world.

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 Safety of Unknown Cities is very much a supernatural horror novel. Indeed it's sexual, it's graphically written, but it's also ...an affecting and powerful novel about heartbreak and the untimely destruction of childhood.--Edward Bryant, Locus.

Alastair Bonnett explores extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places including micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

From Australia to North America, we need to rethink how our cities resist environmental change in the age of climate catastrophe.

I faced many uncertainties without knowing what the outcome may be for my health. The impacts were great. My family faced the unknown challenges right along with me. Experiencing pain and struggling with fear. Through it all, the Lord kept His gentle hand upon us. Through it all His faithful love guided us, helped us and saved us. This is the life story of God’s glory in our lives.

Winner of the 2020 Robert E. Park Award for Best Book from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association From a dive bar in New Orleans to a leafy residential street in Minneapolis, many establishments and homes in cities across the nation share a troubling and largely invisible past: they were once sites of industrial manufacturers, such as plastics factories or machine shops, that likely left behind carcinogens and other hazardous industrial byproducts. In Sites Unseen, sociologists Scott Frickel and James Elliott uncover the hidden histories of these sites to show how they are regularly produced and reincorporated into urban landscapes with limited or no regulatory oversight. By revealing this legacy of our industrial past, Sites Unseen spotlights how city-making has become an ongoing process of social and environmental transformation and risk containment. To demonstrate these dynamics, Frickel and Elliott investigate four very different cities—New Orleans, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon. Using original data assembled and mapped for thousands of former manufacturers’ locations dating back to the 1950s, they find that more than 90 percent of such sites have now been converted to urban amenities such as parks, homes, and storefronts with almost no environmental review. And because manufacturers tend to open plants on new, non-industrial lots rather than on lots previously occupied by other manufacturers, associated hazards continue to spread relatively unabated. As they do, residential turnover driven by gentrification and the rising costs of urban living further obscure these sites from residents and regulatory agencies alike. Frickel and Elliott show that these hidden processes have serious consequences for city-dwellers. While minority and working class neighborhoods are still more likely to attract hazardous manufacturers, rapid turnover in cities means that whites and middle-income groups also face increased risk. Since government agencies prioritize managing polluted sites that are highly visible or politically expedient, many former manufacturing sites that now have other uses remain invisible. To address these oversights, the authors advocate creating new municipal databases that identify previously undocumented manufacturing sites as potential environmental hazards. They also suggest that legislation limiting urban sprawl might reduce the flow of hazardous materials beyond certain boundaries. A wide-ranging synthesis of urban and environmental scholarship, Sites Unseen shows that creating sustainable cities requires deep engagement with industrial history as well as with the social and regulatory processes that continue to remake urban areas through time. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology.

Traveling to Unknown Places presents a compelling, incisive analysis of how French and American writers reshaped their personal and collective identities as they traveled in foreign countries after the social upheavals of the eighteenth-century Atlantic revolutions. Delving into the experiences of renowned figures like Flora Tristan and Margaret Fuller alongside lesser-known postrevolutionary travelers, this book illuminates how cross-cultural encounters pushed writers to redefine their views of nationality, language, race, slavery, gender, religion, science, and political ideologies. Lloyd Kramer deftly demonstrates how unsettling journeys challenged cultural preconceptions and fostered introspective writings that transcended geographical boundaries. By interweaving the perspectives of women and men whose travels led them far beyond their youthful social origins, Kramer unveils a rich tapestry of evolving selfhood, ambition, and political consciousness across the Atlantic world. Each traveler's experience was unique, but long journeys connected all these nineteenth-century writers with others who had traveled before; and trips into unknown, distant cultures also carried travelers toward previously unknown places within themselves.