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How to Build a City

Journeys into the Urban Future

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How to Build a City

By: Gabriella Bennett
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About this listen

'A thoughtful, open-hearted, deeply reported book about what we need to live. In How To Build A City, Bennett roams the world in search of answers to some of the most profound questions of our present and our future' - CAL FLYN

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 are 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 in surprising ways.

Celebrating human ingenuity and resilience, How to Build a City is a remarkable investigation into where we'll live and why it matters.©2026 Gabriella Bennett (P)2026 Headline Publishing Group Limited
Architecture Home Design & Renovation House & Home Politics & Government Sociology Urban

Critic reviews

A thoughtful, open-hearted, deeply reported book about what we need to live. In How To Build A City, Bennett roams the world in search of answers to some of the most profound questions of our present and our future. She offers us thrilling, kaleidoscopic glimpses of lives lived in brave new ways-and the community and forethought it takes to get there (Cal Flyn, bestselling author of Islands of Abandonment)
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