Basilico opens this book with an unusual admission: it may seem incomprehensible to publish a book about a city without ever naming it, especially when that city is his own, Milan. He explains the omission by pointing to the shared fate and common problems of every contemporary city: in the urban environment, the twentieth century's problems and destinies are concentrated to the point of triggering a rapid transformation in social and personal life, turning what used to be "the human condition" into an urban condition. Rather than a portrait of a single place, the book uses an anonymised Milan as a stand-in for the condition of cities everywhere at the end of the century.