I am working on a series of posters looking at different inventions that changed Cities. What “technologies” or inventions do you think have had the biggest impact on the city?
I guess the big ones would be steel and it’s being used to design a framework for tall buildings, as well as elevators.
Sewer system - think what a city would be without it.
Subway
Air conditioning…
The car
Prestressed Concrete
Electric water pump.
what a fun project. There are so many small or overlooked things that we take for granted that do make modern life, particularly urban life, possible. I’ve got a couple books and articles, including a great article on the history of Air Conditioning, that I’ll post in our reading library when I get to work and have the citations handy.
Yup, being able to go vertical and get people up there is huge!
I 100% agree, a lot of time it’s the little things. The water pump, and water tower, are great examples! Also as was mentioned above, sewer…
Oh, I hadn’t considered the car. Is that a helpful change or hurtful?
For sure! I wonder how many years between refrigeration for industry and AC applications started popping up
Yeah, we would be in a real stinky situation!
There is a book based off of a podcast called the 99% Invisible City. The book is really interesting and goes over some of the most important but overlooked aspects of a city. Go check it out
will do, thank you for the recommendation!
I was just about to recommend this book! The 99% Invisible City - 99% Invisible
I remember the History Channel had a show about Cities that covered a lot of this stuff. Been at least 10 years. Don’t remember what it was called.
All I hear is “located in beautiful… downtown… Oakland, California”
Birds
And drones
Imagine a city where no one had aerial views of in progress construction!
Refrigeration (esp. train cars) allowed people to move away from being close to food production sources (I.e. farms) and into cities.
The Toilet