A cultural history of modern cities - from suburbs, downtown districts, and exurban sprawl, to shopping malls and "sustainable" developments - that allows us to view them through the planning, design, architects, and movements that inspired, created, and shaped them. Dream cities explores our cities in a new way - as expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live, work, play, make, buy, and believe.

Castles : Bertram Goodhue and the Romantic city -- Monuments : Daniel Burnham and the ordered city -- Slabs: Le Corbusier, Robert Moses, and the rational city -- Homesteads : Frank Lloyd Wright and the anticity -- Corals : Jane Jacobs, Andres Duany, and the self-organizing city -- Malls : Victory Gruen, Jon Jerdo, and the shopping City -- Habitats : Kenzo Tange, Norman Foster, and the techno-ecological city.