From the first camp to the planned city: where to put it, how to lay it out, and how to keep fire, flood and foul water away from where people sleep.
Place shelters, water, latrines and paths on the first day so that fire, flood and faecal disease cannot sweep the camp.
Needs first: Find and hold water (Water), Separate waste from water (Water), Shelter and body heat (Shelter), Decide how you decide (Society)
Settle where water lasts the dry season, floods cannot reach the floors, the ground drains and the wind carries smoke away.
Needs first: Find and hold water (Water), Decide how you decide (Society), Read the year (Food)
Cross-listed. Its home is Society, Law & Governance › Public works and administration.
Build the thing everyone needs and nobody owns — and settle who pays for it.
Needs first: Decide how you decide (Society), Find and hold water (Water), Boundary and tenure (Society)
Lay out the settlement before it lays itself out.
Needs first: Permanent shelter (Shelter), Boundary and tenure (Society), Separate waste from water (Water), Wheel, cart and road (Transport)
Write and enforce a building code that stops a fire in one building from reaching the next, gets everyone out of the building it starts in, and puts enough water within reach of every building.
Needs first: Plot, street and block, Masonry house and chimney (Shelter), Published rule and the court (Society), The first public good (Society), Keep watch and defend the settlement (Society)
Every parcel has a published zone, every odour, dust or major-hazard works stands at least its separation distance from homes and downwind and downstream of them, no home stands in the functional floodplain, and no hazardous-substance store stands in the 1 % flood zone.
Needs first: Plot, street and block, The health authority (Society), The factory and interchangeable parts (Tools), The register: land, birth, company (Society)
Cross-listed. Its home is Water & Sanitation › Sanitation.
Keep a dense settlement from poisoning itself.
Needs first: Cement and concrete (Materials), Blast furnace and cheap iron (Materials), Germ theory and antisepsis (Health), The factory and interchangeable parts (Tools), Make chlorine disinfectant (Water)
Before the city reaches its fringe, reserve the land it will need for 20–30 years, secure an arterial grid about 1 km apart with its rights-of-way, lay a street hierarchy and utility corridors inside it, and publish the plan.
Needs first: Zoning: separation distances, wind, river and flood, City water and sewerage (Water), Rail and bulk transport (Transport), The register: land, birth, company (Society), Instruments and measurement (Knowledge), Fire separation and the building code
Build and renew neighbourhoods to UN-Habitat's five principles, with public transport and open space within a short walk of everyone, and plan, measure and report disaster risk against the Sendai Framework's targets.
Needs first: Plan the city before it grows, Energy without the carbon bill (Energy), Networks (Computing), Computing (Computing)
Every guide, build, reference sheet and book reached from the steps above.
Where to put a settlement and how to lay it out, from a first night's camp to a town: the numbers that keep fire, flood and foul water away from where people sleep.
Level 3Water in and on the ground, the air and weather, rocks and time, earthquakes and tsunamis, and the climate: each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.
Level 0Surface water is a treatment problem every single day. Groundwater, reached and sealed properly, is a treatment problem once.
Level 0Every public institution an advanced civilisation runs, in the order a rebuilding one can found them: what each is for, when it becomes possible, and the rules that keep it honest, useful and no bigger than its job.
Level 0The distance between a latrine and a well, a bar of soap, and a covered pit prevent more deaths than every hospital on the ladder combined.
Level 3The two dozen that decide who lives where there is no doctor: what each does, how it spreads, what kills it and which step stops it.
Drawn overview sheets, each with its corrections printed under it. They orient; they are never the thing you identify from.
