Slow Burn City : London in the Twenty-First Century

‘A political book in the best sense – helping us to imagine a better world, reminding us that ideas shape how we live and plotting a better future for London . . . full of intriguing facts, always beautifully written . . . Rowan Moore should be Mayor’ Alain De Botton

<p><b>With a new introduction for the paperback.</b><br><br>London is a supreme achievement of civilization. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril. <br><br>London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too many of its citizens a decent home or living. <br><br>In this thought-provoking, fearless, funny and subversive book, Rowan Moore shows how London’s strength depends on the creative and mutual interplay of three forces: people, business and state. To find responses to the challenges of the twenty-first century, London must rediscover its genius for popular action and bold public intervention. <br><br>The global city above all others, London is the best place to understand the way the world’s cities are changing. It could also be, in the shape of a living, churning city of more than eight million people, the most powerful counter-argument to the extremist politics of the present.</p>