This book, filled with playful graphics, challenging questions, and intriguing facts, explores what makes a city and how we could create them differently. What makes a city, a city? Who says so? Created from a dialogue between the artist and author Nika Drubrowski, the late anthropologist David Graeber, and her then four-year-old son, the delightful and provocative book Cities Are Created Differently opens up a space for invention and collaboration.

Combining anthropology, literature, play, and design, the book is essentially a visual essay that invites us to rethink our ideas about cities and the people who inhabit them. It introduces us to a world of history and myth, science and fantasy, calling us to reassess the worlds we inhabit. What could a city be, or what was it once? Perhaps it sleeps at the bottom of the ocean? Perhaps buried in lava? What were the cities of the past, and how will the cities of the future be?

Cities can be virtual, governed by artificial intelligence, or islands of beautiful architecture floating in seas of green. They may be utopian places of refuge or refugee camps. These cities, as the book informs us in provocative and humorous ways, can be anything we wish, and whatever we want them to be can tell us something about who we are, what it means to be human, and what is possible when we open up space for wonder. Cities Are Created Differently is available in two editions, one for reading and reflection, and the other, available at a4kids.org, for design and dreaming.

Pages: 120, Dimensions: 13.3x13.3cm