Reddit mentions of Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City

In addition to the photos from the TED talk OP shared, there is an older TED talk by Robert Neuwirth on squatter cities.

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_neuwirth_on_our_shadow_cities

His book, Shadow Cities, is pretty interesting. Not heavily academic and he does miss a lot, though his observations and stories on the cities he goes to are the best part. One of my favorite ones to read about was the Turkish community of Sultanbeyli. A small squatter area that transformed and if I remember right, created it's own infrastructure.

Edit: Link to book. http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Cities-Billion-Squatters-Urban/dp/0415933196

Edit 2: Because I get too excited about the subject and go off on others, a really great book to dig deeper into the subject of urban studies is Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City by Gmelch, Kemper, and Zenner. Read it for one of my graduate courses recently and loved it. Looks at life in cites on different levels, so it's not just squatter cities. One of my favorite parts was on migration and Mexican communities in the United States.
http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Life-Readings-Anthropology-City/dp/1577666348/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397186036&sr=1-1&keywords=Urban+Life