A call to arms, How to Save the City invites the reader to engage with the challenges of living and working in cities at a time when several conflating emergencies have become more pressing and connected. While the climate crisis is the most urgent, we also face deep social crises in housing, gender and race inequalities, the breakdown of our natural world, our energy consumption, and the deep ripples resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. These emergencies are playing out in acute ways in urban areas.

Locked in to high-energy, high-resource use, cities are responsible for about three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, have ecological and carbon footprints far bigger than their city limits, and are the beating heart of our pro-growth, unequal, consumer-saturated way of life. The city has to change, but how and by whom? Paul Chatterton engages, inspires and empowers the reader to take action to make cities more sustainable, liveable and safer places. He guides the reader through a sequence of challenges, strategies, players, moves and practical tactics of how to save their city.