Sudjic and Burdett are well placed to comment on the 21st century's relationship with cities. This, they believe, will be an urban millennium, with the proportion of town versus country dwellers shifting to favour the latter for the first time in history.
To back up their thesis, these most urbane of curators assault the reader with a blizzard of statistics, slicing and dicing through the fast-changing world of urban demographics. All too often, the figures come from the east, such as the 612% increase in traffic accidents in Shanghai in the period 1990 to 2002, or that city's stratospheric increase in buildings over eight storeys tall - from 121 to 10,045 between 1980 and 2005.
In the end, they tell us, the most successful cities entering the 22nd century will be those that can accommodate change without straitjacketing the lives of their citizens.
INFORMATION
The Endless City, Deyan Sudjic and Ricky Burdett (Phaidon, £35)
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