For those of you who don’t know Austin Williams, here’s why you should: He’s that rare thing – an architect, teacher, journalist, author and activist – who, for decades, has relentlessly questioned and tested us, often with contrarian arguments. 

Future Cities is one such vehicle, alongside Bookshop Barnies, the Academy of Ideas, and mantownhuman. The latter’s 2005 manifesto unashamedly prioritised people, the Enlightenment, internationalism, and our collective progress, a stance that prefigured later critiques of the emerging degrowth discourse.

It was launched not in a quiet bookshop corner but with a loud party in a disused transformer station. Austin and his co-protagonists were each spot-lit for long enough to shout out one part of their 43-point plan, showering us with polemic and bold red mecha-font pamphlets.

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