This book explores the connection between architecture and history, presenting a rich variety of examples from different cultures that have made human settlements, architecture, and cities. It demonstrates that histories of settlement pattern conserve natural and human sources, symbiotic livening with nature, animals, vegetation, communities that are on the move, and how the knowledge of materials and techniques of making are integral to architecture.

The book discusses the social, ecological, textual, philosophical, material, and interpretative processes that reflect in the making of architecture and cities through history. It emphasises on how the traditions of making buildings and human habitat involve people of all social strata. It also argues that the histories of architecture cannot be of durable and fixed structures alone, but should also closely examine how buildings are extended, sustained, and the processes of their dissolution.

This book will be important for students of architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture. It will also be a valuable resource for other disciplines including sociology, anthropology, history, environment and ecology, and cultural studies. Additionally, it would be helpful for engineers, administrators, decision makers, and economists involved in deciding growth priorities for cities to balance the dependence on technology with the concern for sustainable human habitat.