"The book draws together material from several countries and areas of practice - from the affluent as well as the non-affluent worlds, and from art as well as architecture - which it links by a common framework of critical reflection and theory.

Running through the book is a concern for the everyday, for the seemingly small and insignificant ways in which people occupy the built environment, which constitute what Henri Lefebvre calls representational spaces; from awareness of this dimension of urban space (and the failures consequent on ignorance of it in some kinds of modern architecture and planning), the book moves to the question of sustainability."--BOOK JACKET.