Encyclopedia of the City

“The term city means anything and everything” is the opening sentence of the introduction to this volume. This line illustrates from the outset how broad and diverse the subject of urbanisation is and how bold and ambitious Roger Caves and his editorial team have been in trying to provide an encyclopedia on this subject.

Much of the content is interesting and enlightening on a number of aspects of urbanisation, but my overall impression was that there were some significant omissions among the topics covered. The book does not make any claims to be a definitive work or to serve as...