Full of playful graphics provocative questions and curious facts this book asks what makes a
city and how we might make them differently. What makes a city a city? Who says? Drafted over
decades out of a dialogue between artist and author Nika Dubrovsky the late anthropologist
David Graeber and Nika’s then four-year-old son this delightful and provocative book Cities
Made Differently opens a space for invention and collaboration. Fusing anthropology literature
play and drawing the book is essentially a visual essay that asks us to reconsider our ideas
about cities and the people who inhabit them. Drawing us into a world of history and myth
science and imagination Graeber and Dubrovsky invite us to rethink the worlds we
inhabit—because we can and nothing is too strange or too wonderful to be true. With inspired
pictures and prompts Cities Made Differently asks what a city is or could be or once was.
Sleeping at the bottom of the ocean? Buried in lava? What were those cities of long ago and
what will the cities of the future be? They might be virtual ruled by AI or islands of
beautiful architecture afloat in seas of greenery. They might be utopian places of refuge or
refugee camps as far as the eye can see. On land underground or aloft excavated or imagined
cities this book tells us in provocative and funny ways can be anything we want them to
be—and what we want them to be can tell us something about who we are what it is to be human
and what’s possible when we make way for wonder. Cities Made Differently exists in two
versions one for reading and thinking the other downloadable at a4kids.org for drawing and
dreaming.
