Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home
Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home. W.W. Norton, 2026.
A sweeping history of humanity’s most fundamental creation—the home—and its effects on the land, cities, and people themselves.
Americans spend, on average, 90 percent of their lives indoors, with two-thirds of that time spent in their homes. Globally, the construction and maintenance of residential buildings account for a staggering portion of carbon emissions. In this timely and fascinating work, architect and urban-planning scholar Stefan Al deftly weaves together archaeology, engineering, social history, and environmental science to explain how our homes have developed through the ages and in turn shaped civilization and the planet itself.
From tiny pit-houses in the Levant and Mesoamerica thousands of years ago to soaring skyscrapers in Dubai, New York, and Shanghai today, Dwelling on Earth takes readers on a swift and absorbing tour of the evolution of human habitation. Whisking readers from ancient Pompeii to contemporary Hong Kong, industrial-age Liverpool to postwar Levittown, Al shows how our choices in housing have both reflected and affected ideas about gender roles, privacy, and comfort. Discover how seemingly mundane elements—like door-knockers and corridors—have altered everyday interactions, and how material choices have remade the planet’s surface. He also confronts the darker side of domesticity, exposing the unintended consequences of our architectural choices across millennia, including smoke-filled Neolithic dwellings, deadly fires in crowded Roman apartment buildings, and worsening social isolation in car-dependent suburbs. Finally, he examines the myths and reality of future housing, including 3D-printed homes and space architecture built by robots.
Drawing from personal experiences across global cities and professional insights, Al illuminates how our choices in housing continue to influence everything from social relationships to climate change, ultimately arguing that understanding this rich history is crucial for building a more sustainable future. With billions more people needing housing in the coming decades, Dwelling on Earth reveals how we might transform humanity’s defining challenge into our greatest opportunity.
Illustrations by Dave Dugas.
6 x 9 in / 320 pages.
The Inspiration for Dwelling on Earth
I've lived in strikingly varied homes—a Dutch row house where I cycled safely to school, a communal student residence in Delft with kitchens built for connection, a tiny apartment in Barcelona's lively old town, a cleverly compact Hong Kong pencil tower, and later to American suburban homes from California to New Jersey.
Living in these spaces revealed how deeply they shaped my daily life, relationships, and worldview. That personal journey sparked larger questions about how homes influence our social bonds, our sense of self, and our environmental footprint.
As a professor of architecture and urban planning who has researched housing worldwide, I became fascinated by the full arc of human habitation—from the first rock shelters to today's skyscrapers—and what our ancestors' dwelling innovations can teach us about building tomorrow's homes in harmony with human needs and the planet.
About the Author
Stefan Al, PhD, RA is an architect, urban planner, and director of the Urban Planning program at Hunter College. He has spent his career designing and studying cities across Asia, Europe, and the Americas — including the world’s tallest tower in Guangzhou. He is the author or editor of ten books on architecture and urbanism, including Supertall, praised by The New York Times Book Review, and The Strip, named a Wall Street Journal best book to read. He has spoken at TED and the Smithsonian, and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal. Dwelling on Earth is published by W.W. Norton.