In this sweeping appraisal of the urban condition, David Wadley argues that anything less that high-level resolution in modelling the well-being of inhabitants is wasting precious time. Humanity is encountering rising entropy, caused by unsustainable economic and demographic expansion. Supported by a strong interdisciplinary backdrop featuring systems and crisis theories, The City of Grace tackles these obstacles by picturing gracious function and graceful form in a human-scale settlement. In an attempt to salvage things lost in the teleology of urban development over the last 100 years, the outlook is both heterodox and contrarian. How long can we all go on in the present way? In addressing grace, a more elevated concept than those focusing previous urban analyses, this manifesto aims not to placate or please but, instead, to get humanity to face the encompassing realities it tries so hard to forget.

David Wadley is a teaching and research academic in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland, Australia.