City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and ChicagoA city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life, celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization. But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization. It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential—and central—part of how we define our civilization. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
Bringing Water to Philadelphia Boston and Chicago | 11 |
Water Urban Society and the Public Good | 53 |
Water and the Reconciliation of the Natural and the Urban | 121 |
The Sanitary Movement the Temperance Crusade and the Water Cure | 161 |
Other editions - View all
City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing ... Carl Smith Limited preview - 2013 |
City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing ... Carl Smith No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
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Bibliographic information
| Title | City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago |
| Author | Carl Smith |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press, 2013 |
| ISBN | 022602265X, 9780226022659 |
| Length | 340 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / General History / United States / 19th Century Literary Criticism / American / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |