Or should architects and planners concentrate on mitigating the consequences of wider events (climate change, war, demographic and economic shifts), then hope for the best? What happens when we have no choice but to build or rebuild cities? It makes for an ambitious and engaging investigation, even if she is at times breathless about the projects she encounters. There are goodies (indigenous people, artisans, architects with boutique practices and niche projects involving seaweed) and baddies (20th-century Scottish town planners, mining corporations, Foster+Partners). There is something of John Grindrod’s wry architectural odysseys, or even of Ian Nairn at his most lyrical in her writing.