It has been millennia since cities came into being, and the question remains: can we make them better? From ancient Athens to 21st-century Shanghai, Richard Sennett traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford; and takes a tour from the backstreets of Medellín, Colombia, to Google headquarters in Manhattan. Through it all, he laments that the "closed city"—segregated, regimented, and controlled—has spread from the global North to the exploding urban agglomerations of the global South. As an alternative, Sennett argues for the "open city," where citizens actively hash out their differences and planners experiment with urban forms that make it easier for residents to cope.