Historical evolution and processes of cultural and economic globalization have brought out relevant and frightening risks on a global scale: from urbicide and violence to climate change and an increase in natural disasters, but also an enormous widening of economic and social inequality. Today, humanity as a whole is facing epochal challenges that require a radical metamorphosis of inhabited spaces. Cities Under Pressure illustrates a new design paradigm, an open intervention system that seeks the establishment of a dynamic equilibrium that is continuously renegotiated. Cities Under Pressure imagines and defines new urban environments that abandon a rigid design scheme in favor of growing evolutionary mechanisms capable of embodying the ongoing sustainable transition, so as to guarantee a resilient and peaceful future.