"Bennett has a gift for atmospheric language and crystalline description ... There is something of John Grindrod's wry architectural odysseys or even Ian Nairn at his most lyrical in her writing"
- HELEN BARRATT, The Spectator
A moveable city in the Arctic Circle. Tower blocks tackling loneliness in Tokyo. Helsinki's sprawling underground metropolis. And Ukraine's bomb-resistant bedrooms. These places, and many more, are among the strange and dazzling solutions responding to our uncertain world.
Gabriella Bennett takes readers on a globe-trotting journey to learn how we're reimagining home to embrace the challenges of contemporary living. From political instability to wildfires, flooding and an increased pressure on materials and space, the built environment is under threat like never before. It must change - and it is. We'll travel to the frontier cities of this urban revolution and discover how people are transforming their communities.
Celebrating human ingenuity and resilience, How to Build a City is a remarkable investigation into where we'll live and why it matters.
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'A fascinating and compassionate book about the lives we build and rebuild - and the places we come to call home'- PETER ROSS, author of Upon a White Horse
'If you want to feel genuinely hopeful about our shared future, How to Build a City is the place to start' - JEN STOUT, author of Night Train to Odesa
'Spectacularly hopeful, How to Build a City is magnificent' - LUCY EASTHOPE, author of When the Dust Settles
'A thoughtful, open-hearted, deeply-reported book about what we need to live' - CAL FLYN, author of Islands of Abandonment