How to Build a City : Journeys into the Urban Future – Gabriella Bennett
A moveable city in the Arctic Circle. Tower blocks tackling loneliness in Tokyo. Helsinki’s vast underground metropolis. And Ukraine’s bomb-resistant bedrooms. These places, and many more, are among the innovative architectural and urban responses to an increasingly uncertain world.
In How to Build a City, Gabriella Bennett takes readers on a global journey through some of the most fascinating experiments in contemporary design, planning and placemaking. From political instability and climate change to wildfires, flooding, and growing pressures on materials, land and housing, the built environment faces unprecedented challenges. Yet across the world, architects, planners, engineers and communities are finding imaginative ways to adapt.
Travelling to the frontiers of this urban revolution, Bennett explores how cities are being reshaped through ingenuity, resilience and collaboration. From pioneering housing projects to radical infrastructure and community-led initiatives, these stories reveal how the places we inhabit continue to evolve.
A compelling exploration of architecture, urbanism and the future of cities, How to Build a City offers an inspiring investigation into where we live, how we build, and why it matters.
Author: Gabriella Bennett
Publisher: Headline Press
Format: Hardback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781035421954
Publication date: August 2026