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?
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I guess the big ones would be steel and it’s being used to design a framework for tall buildings, as well as elevators.
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Sewer system - think what a city would be without it.
Subway
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Air conditioning…
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The car
Prestressed Concrete
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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.
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Yup, being able to go vertical and get people up there is huge!
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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…
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Oh, I hadn’t considered the car. Is that a helpful change or hurtful?
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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
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will do, thank you for the recommendation!
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.
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All I hear is “located in beautiful… downtown… Oakland, California”
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Birds 
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And drones
Imagine a city where no one had aerial views of in progress construction!
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Refrigeration (esp. train cars) allowed people to move away from being close to food production sources (I.e. farms) and into cities.
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The Toilet 
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