How to Make the Next City is a practical manual of design strategies for a new architecture. It responds to present challenges to architecture's public relevance, by assembling examples from all over the world, at all scales (from a detail to an urban plan), which can reconnect architecture with its role in serving society. Each strategy is presented in a clear and concise manner—through diagrams, photographs, and text—to encourage adoption and adaptation. These strategies are then assembled into six scales: living, building, streets, infrastructure, policy, and society, addressing the most pressing challenges faced by our cities today. How to Make the Next City ultimately reframes the role of the architect, from an individual author to custodian of the built environment.

Rory Hyde is curator of contemporary architecture and urbanism at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Hyde studied architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne, where he also completed a PhD on emerging models of practice enabled by new technologies. He is currently adjunct senior fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is also co-host of The Architects, a weekly radio show on architecture, which was presented in the Australian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. Hyde has worked in the Netherlands with Volume, Al Manakh (Archis/AMO), MVRDV, the NAi, Viktor & Rolf, and Mediamatic—and previously in Melbourne with BKK Architects. His first book, Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture (Routledge, 2012), was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Prize for Architecture in the Media.