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Design Book: 50 city stories explored

The Design Book: 50 city stories explored brings together projects of all kinds delivered for and with cities around the world. We examine the ideas that help make great urban places – through design that is intelligent, beautiful, green, resilient, responsible and future-facing.

We include the thoughts of a number of internationally-renowned spokespeople, talking about the challenges cities face today. They include:

  • Judith Rodin – President of The Rockefeller Foundation

  • Edgar Pieterse – director of the African Center for Cities

  • Clover Moore – Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney

  • Thomas Heatherwick - British designer and the founder of Heatherwick Studio

Explore our ideas for making great urban places using the links on the right. These pages include content not featured in the book.

Today’s city challenges

Cities must tackle a diverse set of challenges. To name a few, they must deal with urbanisation, changing demographics, climate change, economic growth, water scarcity and congestion.

The world’s cities must differentiate themselves, to attract the increasingly mobile global workforce, tourists and inward investment.

More than anything, cities must be fit for purpose today while anticipating the possibilities of tomorrow.

In the Arup Design Book, 50 city stories explored, we explore some of our responses to the often-conflicting demands placed on cities.

As the projects featured in the book show, cities have the opportunity to make many interventions for improvement, becoming greener, more intelligent, beautiful, future facing, responsible and resilient. These themes inform our discussions within this book, as they do our work with cities worldwide.

Discover the Design Book on these pages. Take a look at the electronic version of the book, or buy it here.

Arup’s Malcolm Smith and Jerome Frost debate the challenges of city design.
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