Historical evolution and processesof cultural and economic globalization have brought out relevant andfrightening risks on a global scale: from urbicide and violence to climatechange and an increase in natural disasters, but also an enormous widening ofeconomic and social inequality. Today, humanity as a whole is facing epochalchallenges that require a radical metamorphosis of inhabited spaces. Cities Under Pressure illustrates a newdesign paradigm, an open intervention system that seeks the establishment of adynamic equilibrium that is continuously renegotiated. Cities Under Pressure imagines and defines new urban environmentsthat abandon a rigid design scheme in favor of growing evolutionary mechanismscapable of embodying the ongoing sustainable transition, so as to guarantee aresilient and peaceful future.