'A fresh, clear-eyed and timely analysis'Peter Frankopan'A sharp and lively urbanist manifesto'Times Literary SupplementVisionary Oxford professor Ian Goldin and The Economist's Tom Lee-Devlin show why the city is where the battles of inequality, social division, pandemics and climate change must be faced.From centres of antiquity like Athens or Rome to modern metropolises like New York or Shanghai, cities throughout history have been the engines of human progress and the epicentres of our greatest achievements. Now, for the first time, more than half of humanity lives in cities, a share that continues to rise. In the developing world, cities are growing at a rate never seen before.Globalization and technological change have concentrated wealth into a small number of booming metropolises, leaving many smaller cities and towns behind and feeding populist resentment - so it is within cities that the fight to make our societies fairer, more cohesive and sustainable must start. Yet even within seemingly thriving cities like London or San Francisco, the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen and our retreat into online worlds tears away at our social fabric. Meanwhile, pandemics and climate change pose existential threats to our increasingly urban world.Professor Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin combine the lessons of history with a deep understanding of the challenges confronting our world today to show why cities are at a crossroads - and hold our destinies in the balance.

Contemporary relevance - as remote working becomes the norm this is a defence of the city - which like it or not for most of the world's population will be the future of life on earth. It will be the first book to focus on cities as the essential solution to our global woes.

List of FiguresPreface1 Introduction2 Engines of Progress3 Levelling Up4 Divided Cities5 Remote Work: The Threat to Cities6 Cities, Cyberspace, and the Future of Community7 Beyond the Rich World8 The Spectre of Disease9 A Climate of Peril10 Conclusion: Better TogetherAcknowledgementsNotesBibliography