I read a novel in the late '70s but I can't remember the name or when it was written.
After years of our hoping for alien contact, they finally arrive on earth. But all they do is put up some giant structures randomly all over the planet. We are helpless to stop them, but the expected invasion never follows. We don't see the aliens themselves. In the end, the main human character finally figures out that the aliens aren't trying to take us over. In fact, they hardly even notice our existence. They just plopped down these building-like things the same way we would plop down the pylons of a bridge, and they ignored us or killed us like we ignore or kill the rats around bridges. I seem to remember the title being something like City of Light, or City of Angels, or something like that. Can anyone help me?
Answer
John Brunner's Age of Miracles, published in 1973 may be what you want.
It is an expanded version of his 1965 novel, Day of the Star Cities
The first hint that Earthman had that aliens had come to their planet was a catastrophic one. Suddenly, without warning, all the atomic weapons and fissionable material on Earth were blown up. Panic, death and chaos reigned for months before things began to get back under control.
By that time reports were already coming in of five mysterious star-shaped cities scattered over the globe - huge area of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorganizing to human senses, and impregnable to attack. The aliens had built their bases on Earth.
But were they only bases, or - something else?

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