About this book:

From the soaring glass of the HSBC tower to the zero-carbon ambition of Masdar City, Norman Foster didn’t just design buildings—he sold the world a seductive vision of tomorrow. *Selling the Future City* pulls back the curtain on the most influential architectural brand of our time, revealing how Foster + Partners packaged high-tech sustainability into a global commodity. This is the untold story of how a "green aesthetic" became a geopolitical strategy, helping nations and corporations brand themselves as forward-thinking while reshaping skylines from London to Abu Dhabi to New York.

But beneath the shimmering facades and the rhetoric of ecological harmony lies a sharper reality. With rigorous analysis and global case studies, this book asks the uncomfortable questions the renderings ignore: Do these "eco-cities" actually deliver on their promises, or do they widen inequality? Who benefits when the airport becomes the town square and the skyscraper becomes a sustainability icon? From the "green premium" that inflates real estate values to the smart-city sensors that monitor public life, the authors trace the fine line between urban innovation and a new, polished form of control.

Essential reading for architects, planners, policymakers, and anyone who lives in a city being sold a better future, *Selling the Future City* is a definitive reckoning with the business of utopia. It moves beyond the glossy monographs to assess the true return on investment for the communities left to inhabit these visions. As the climate crisis accelerates and the "smart city" paradigm tightens its grip, this book offers the critical framework we need to distinguish genuine urban progress from a very expensive marketing campaign.