"At a time when urban downtowns are struggling to reinvent themselves in the wake of the Covid pandemic, Bruno Carvalho's ambitious book is a powerful reminder that planners, architects, writers, artists, and politicians have long been imagining new futures for their cities. With Carvalho as a dazzling guide, we travel back in time and across the globe from Europe and the Americas to Africa and Asia, discovering three centuries of city dreamers." --Lizabeth Cohen, Bancroft Prize-winning author of Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age "Witty, erudite, playful, and serious, The Invention of the Future is a book about cities but also so much more. It is about how we have lived together in the past, and how we might live in, and reclaim, the future. A brilliant, one-of-a-kind book in which every reader will learn something new on every page." --Jonathan Levy, author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States " The Invention of the Future takes readers on a rich and revealing journey through the cities of the Atlantic world, illuminating centuries of metropolitan growth and urban visions. Bruno Carvalho offers us a fascinating intellectual odyssey that joins historical narrative with past imaginings of things to come." --A.

K. Sandoval-Strausz, editor of Metropolitan Latinidad: Transforming American Urban History "In this lucid and ambitious book about the history of cities since 1750, Bruno Carvalho chronicles the making and remaking of major urban centers around the world. He pays close attention to the dreams of planners, revolutionaries, suburbanites, migrants, and others that have shaped the course of cities, from Lisbon and New York to Rio de Janeiro and Lagos. The Invention of the Future synthesizes a vast and vital topic." -- Jeanne Gang, Founding Partner of Studio Gang and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.