Cities: How Humans Live Together - Megan Clendenan - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Megan Clendenan

ILLUSTRATOR: Suharu Ogawa

GENRE: Middle-grade Nonfiction

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: An amazingly informative book about the past, present, and future of cities. Meant for MG readers, but will offer lots of fun trivia to everyone.

Most of you reading this review might be city dwellers. Have you ever thought about what goes on behind the scenes? The water in your taps, the easy sanitation, garbage disposal, public transport… we take everything for granted. But there must be so much of planning and coordination involved in all these activities that never even crosses our minds.

Cities didn’t even exist about 9000 years ago. Within this relative short span, the number and importance of cities has grown so much that we can’t imagine any country without thinking of its metropolises. It is astounding to realise that 50% of the world’s population (4 billion people) today lives in cities, a number that is expected to go up to 7 billion by the year 2050. Cities also contribute to 60% of the world’s greenhouse gases. Like them or hate them, you can’t ignore the significance of cities.

Just like the cities themselves, the problems faced by cities have also changed over the years. While initial urban planning might have been more focussed on providing the basic amenities to its denizens, cities today are also compelled to think about sustainability, effective waste management, environmental friendly initiatives and climate change threats while still keeping the billion residents satisfied.

If any of the above points sounds interesting to you, you have got to read this book!

The book covers myriad topics in a reader-friendly way. And when I say ‘reader-friendly’, I mean the target reading audience of 9-12 year olds. City planning, transport, water and waste, electricity, food supply… all extensive topics covered in an accessible manner. The content doesn’t cover only positive historical facts but also includes the darker side of cities, covering diseases, gentrification, marginalised community displacement for new construction, and so on. There is a detailed glossary at the end.

I loved the special sidebar: “If I lived in …”, covering cities as varied as Mesopotamia to York to Curitiba to Taipei. It was an excellent way of imagining historical and contemporary life across the world. Another fun sidebar was “When You Gotta Go”, offering insights about public bathroom facilities in cities across the ages.

The book has the text arranged in well-spaced blocks of manageable length. This never makes the text overwhelming. The content is accompanied by gorgeous photographs of city spaces from across the world as well as excellent digital illustrations.

I must add that the author has done her graduate studies in environmental urban planning. Hence her grasp and comfort over the topic shows itself on every page. The content could have become too complicated, but the author’s approach keeps things interesting all the way.

I appreciate how the book covered cities from across the world rather than sticking to Western countries. That said, there was one little factual error in the information about Mumbai (Dharavi isn’t an edge city but a locality very much in the heart of proper Mumbai city), which made me wonder if there could be possible errors in the other tidbits that I may not have realised due to my lack of familiarity with those cities.

In short, this would definitely be a fascinating book for children wanting to know about cities as it is full of information and trivia. Strongly recommended to homes, schools and libraries.

My thanks to Orca Book Publishers and NetGalley for the DRC of “Cities: How Humans Live Together”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.