William Morrish wants his students to build a better city of the future. But in order to do so, they need to closely examine every interior and exterior component of the urban landscape. “We’ve been looking at the city from the outside; now it’s time to look at it from the inside,” says Morrish, a professor of urban ecology. What does that mean, exactly? “It begins with the notion that this discipline doesn’t have exclusionary boundaries,” he explains. “You need to understand that whatever you design has a relationship to multiple issues.” Those issues include not just the material and construction of the object but also how it’s used in the daily activities of consuming, working, and living—what Morrish calls “basic economic and ecological transactions.”