World Cities, City Worlds: Explorations with metaphors, icons and perspectives is about how we make sense of cities, those extraordinary places where half the world’s population now lives. It explores ways of seeing, experiencing and thinking about cities by framing them through metaphors (regarding cities as communities, as battlegrounds, as marketplaces, as machines, as organisms), by reference to iconic cities (the book provides portraits of Mumbai, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles and Venice)  or from different perspectives (those of city rulers, of artists, of analysts and of city life).  In these ways it delves below the familiar appearance of cities and the commonplace sensations of everyday living to reveal what makes cities - across the world and through history - work.