The MESH Cities project investigates how computer-driven technologies change cities. It's not a delirious celebration of 21st-century information technology. Nor is it a somber critique of computing's darker side.

Instead, it tracks how people, companies, and institutions wield new tools to design our cities—both as they exist today and as they might exist tomorrow. Comprehensive designers matter now more than ever. Without them, we won't make it to the next century. That's not hyperbole. The planet can't support ten billion people—not unless we design better cities. Design thinking is an act of agency in defiance of creeping nihilism.