"Think globally, act locally" tackling the global urban challenge one community at a time

Today, no one book has captured the imagination of our diverse world, but works like Planet of Slums by Mike Davis and Hoi, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman detail the staggering dimensions of our urban challenge, and the wrenching changes the global economic crisis will exact on all of us. In population-rich Egypt, we saw cemetery crypts turned into affordable housing, along with vast swaths of four- and five-story concrete buildings all built without regard for either property ownership or official permitting.