This book is an overview of plans, maps, and occasionally map-views of great cities all over the world. It follows the development of the city plan from its earliest stages in the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment, to the colonial city, the Grand Tour, Asian cities, the Industrial Revolution, gold rush and frontier cities, the administrative city plan, and finally the modern pictorial city map.

Each map will be accompanied by a textual description of the map placing it within its historical, political, social, and /or economic context. In addition, we will also include short biographies of the cartographers who produced each map highlighting their contributions to cartography.

While the work will cover many of the world's great cities, the book will revolve around a loose group of anchor cities with a long mapping heritage, such as New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Rome, and others, that will appear repeatedly as the book progresses through different styles and eras of the urban plan. This will enable to readers to better understand how the city plan has changed over time as well as how these great cities have changed and, at the same time, extrapolate a better understanding of the other city plans offered.

While the book will follow a loose chronical progression, overlapping urban planning and cultural differences, prevent this book from following a strict chronological order