Cities: How Humans Live Together (Orca Timeline)

If you could design a city that would be both a great place to live and good for the planet, what would it look like?

Today, about four billion people―more than half the world’s population―live in cities. This number could rise to seven billion by 2050. Cities face big challenges, including threats from climate change, food insecurity, a lack of clean water and rapid population growth, but they are also places where innovation and sustainability can thrive.

Cities: How Humans Live Together travels through time to explore questions like When and why did cities form? How did people access food and water? Where did they go to the bathroom? Peek into the past to see how cities have changed through time and explore what could make cities more sustainable and welcoming for today and tomorrow.

The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Megan Clendenan is an award-winning children’s author. Her books include Cities: How Humans Live Together (Children’s Book Council 2024 Librarian’s Favorite), and Fresh Air, Clean Water: Our Right to a Healthy Environment (2023 Green Earth Book Award Winner), What Do We Eat?: How Humans Find, Grow and Share Food (Children’s Book Council 2025 Teacher’s Favorite) and she has more books on the way! Megan loves speaking with readers at festivals, schools and libraries. She lives near Vancouver.

Suharu Ogawa is a Toronto-based illustrator. Her love for drawing started in a kindergarten art school after being kicked out of calligraphy class for refusing to convert to right-handedness. Formally trained in art history and cultural anthropology, she worked for several years as a university librarian until her passion for illustration called her out of that career and into the pursuit of a lifelong dream. Since then, Suharu has created illustrations for magazines, public art projects and children's books, including All Consuming: Shop Smarter for the Planet, Cities: How Humans Live Together and Why Humans Work: How Jobs Shape Our Lives and Our World. She also teaches illustration at OCAD University in Toronto.