Cities Made Differently
About This Book
Cities Made Differently asks what makes a city a city, and who gets to decide. It is full of playful graphics, provocative questions and curious facts, and it invites readers to imagine how cities might be made differently. The book grew over several decades out of a conversation between the artist and author Nika Dubrovsky, the late anthropologist David Graeber, and Nika's son, who was four years old at the time. Graeber is also known for books such as Debt and Bullshit Jobs. Cities Made Differently combines anthropology, literature, play and drawing into what is essentially a visual essay, and it asks readers to reconsider their assumptions about cities and the people who live in them. It moves through history and myth, science and imagination, on the principle that nothing is too strange or too wonderful to be true. With its illustrations and prompts, the book asks what a city is, could be, or once was. A city might sleep at the bottom of the ocean or lie buried in lava. Cities of the future might be virtual, ruled by AI, or islands of striking architecture floating in seas of greenery. They might be utopian refuges or refugee camps stretching to the horizon, on land, underground or in the air, excavated or imagined. The answer the authors offer, in a funny and provocative way, is that a city can be whatever we want, and that what we want tells us something about who we are and what is possible when we leave room for wonder. The book exists in two versions: one for reading and thinking, and a downloadable one at a4kids.org for drawing and dreaming.
ISBN: 9780262549332
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