omg, you can tell me your city is more complex than London when you're a city of thirty-two boroughs founded in the first century AD.

And you know, I wrote that out just to be punchy, but I think I'd be put off enough by that idea not to read a book with this as the central concept? Because... London, and also Delhi (the seventh great city on that site) and Liverpool, a city that has been both the richest and the poorest city in Europe, and Singapore, and Tokyo and Hong Kong? And perhaps I'm still being punchy and it would make more internal sense if I read the book, but... no, there's a naivete about that I don't like.