We live in a world of cities. In 2007, for the first time ever, the number of urban rather than rural dwellers in the world increased. For a long time, scientists have been describing the patterns of urbanization and distinguishing the urbanizations in the old industrialized countries from those in the Global South. The social geographer and spatial planner Einhard Schmidt-Kallert, on the other hand, has observed many different paths and even regionally specific patterns of urbanization in the southern countries and wants to capture the diversity of the processes with his book. He explores questions like these: Why do people move from the countryside to the cities? How do they find housing? How do children live in the city? How do people deal with violence? What is the role of urban planning? Schmidt-Kallert's understandable language and his change of perspective between the stories of the immigrants on the one hand and the.