The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Humanize: A Maker’s Guide to Designing Our Cities, by Thomas Heatherwick

Imagine a graphic novel that offers a compelling argument for why our cities can be more than just boring backdrops for daily routines. That’s the vision in Thomas Heatherwick’s Humanize and it comes to life through lots of examples, stories and visuals of exactly how cities could be more interesting and exciting. You may not see yourself as someone who is actively “designing cities” and you probably don’t work in urban planning, but the beauty of this book is how approachable the author makes these topics.

This wildly original book explores what it means to make human versus inhuman (inhumane?!) places and how we can all change our perspective on what we should demand and expect from the places we inhabit. The world doesn’t need to be boring. Thanks to this book, perhaps we can all imagine a new way to make sure it isn’t.