What's Wrong with this Picture?: Mikael Hard and Thomas J. Misa, eds., Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities

摘要

Cities and technology, a line of inquiry dating back to the seminal works of Lewis Mumford, appears to have lost some of its vigor. Of course, Mumford did not invent the topic; as the bibliographies of his books demonstrate, the connection between technology and the urban phenomenon intrigued philosophers, engineers, and statesmen in ancient times and provoked Marx and Weber, Georg Simmel and Robert Park. How resources are organized to support cities, and how systems are built and maintained on their behalf-these are deeply political issues, with implications for social structures, centralization, public procurement markets, and territorial control.