A significant proportion of people today live in towns and cities that grew up around trade, industry, and cars. Think of the docks of Liverpool, the factories of Osaka, the automobile obsession of New York’s Robert Moses, or the low-density sprawl of modern Riyadh. Few of these places were created with human health in mind. Meanwhile, as humanity has shifted its center of gravity to cities, there’s been an alarming rise in illnesses such as depression, cancer, and diabetes.
This mismatch between humans and our habitat shouldn’t come as a surprise. From the second half of the 20th century, pioneering thinkers such as American author and activist Jane Jacobs and
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