City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago

摘要

In this crisp and readable book, Carl Smith uses the development of water supply systems to explore American ideas of urbanization. Working under the theory that "cities are built out of ideas as much as they are of timber, bricks, and stone," Smith examines the "infrastructure of ideas" as constructed in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago (p. 2). Although Smith selected diverse locations, this is not a comparative study so much as an attempt to show how different kinds of cities had to grapple with similar questions as they attempted to improve access to potable water. Smith is not interested in the small details of water supply engineering, although some appear here. Rather, he's written a little book about the big ideas these systems forced Americans to consider as they determined how residents would gain reliable access to clean, plentiful water.