While we still talk about “the” Internet, we increasingly have two separate access marketplaces: high-speed wired and second-class wireless. High-speed access is a superhighway for those who can afford it, while racial minorities and poorer and rural Americans must make do with a bike path.

The increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities. The recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010.

For his new project, Romer set up a nonprofit organization dedicated to convincing governments across the developing world that they should cede a portion of their territory to an external authority in order to create a “charter city” in which new rules would make it attractive for skilled immigrants, unskilled migrants and businesses to come and settle.

This radical idea is slowly catching on. Honduras is poised to be the first country in the world to host a charter city after its Congress approved a constitutional amendment enabling such a plan in January.

As per estimates of the Committee set up by Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation under the Chairmanship of Dr. Pranob Sen, Principal Adviser, Planning Commission (former Secretary, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, and Chief Statistician, Government of India) the slum population in the country is expected to touch 93.06 million by 2011.

Colonias -- impoverished communities along the United States' southern border -- date back to the 1950s when ruthless property developers created unincorporated subdivisions on agriculturally useless land that usually lay in floodplains. They failed to put in any infrastructure and then sold the plots to people seeking affordable housing at hugely inflated rates of interest.

"Miss one payment," says Lionel Lopez who runs the South Texas Colonia Initiative, an advocacy group for residents, "and you have to start all over again."

There are 2.3 million people living in America with no car and without a supermarket within a one-mile radius. People living in these "food deserts" are often obese and unhealthy because they're stuck eating junk food from the convenience store. Slate has prepared an interactive map of the counties with the most people who live in food deserts as defined above.

In 2011, Indian society will transform. The right to education Bill, which will be applied this year, requires all private schools to set aside 25% of their seats for the poor