8) Everyone else’s lives are as complex and as unknowable as our own.

The main purpose of this book is to weave a complex web of ideas and thoughts to show that the world’s future depends on architecture. That is a terrifying and exciting thought. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity of addressing these issues by giving voice to the people of Addis Ababa. I hope my book creates a safe space for this type of honest exchange, and gives people an opportunity to engage one another in real and necessary conversation.

It is hard to believe you deserve respect when you don’t have a home, when your country of origin rejects you, when you must leave the country or city you grew up in to escape persecution or hunger, or when your city is completed destroyed.

The idea of human rights has inspired many of the world’s greatest reformers for centuries. It is notable that today many architects seem to believe that the high and rising levels of inequality in the way we shape and construct cities is objectionable in itself and it is worth asking how things could be done differently. If the only people who can protect themselves from the gaze of urbanization are the rich and the powerful, that’s a problem. And it is not just an economic problem. It is a human-rights problem.

Architecture coupled with human rights is probably the best way to give a human face to the new phenomenon of urbanization. Inequality brought about by architecture can undermine the legitimacy of architecture itself. Any architectural explanation which seeks to untie the connections between the poor and the rich, will inevitably cast the poor as responsible for their own lack of empowerment. It lays inequities and alienation squarely at the feet of the poor. But if cities are to be ‘inclusive, smart and sustainable’ we should all be part of the conversation about architecture and human rights.

Is poverty a lack of basic resources or the unequal distribution of space, resources, and opportunities? In fact, we redefine what poverty means all the time. In rich countries, the majority of people on the poverty line still have electricity, water, toilets, refrigerators, television, and mobile phones. While the ones under the poverty line do not have homes.

A trophic cascade of poverty is an “ecological” process, which starts at the top of the building chain and tumbles all the way down to the state of homelessness. In our comfortable, safe, crowded cities, we build and harm people.

Many, including philosophers, architects, and ordinary people, believe that human nature is fundamentally selfish, that we’re only ever really motivated by our own welfare. But if that’s true, why do some have the fortitude to stand up to some of the world’s greatest injustices? Because who we are, and the extent to which we are human, depends on how human everyone around us is.