City Water, City Life
Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago
A 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, an embodiment of the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created it. In "City Water, City Life", celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this infrastructure of ideas through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. In this period the United States began its rapid transformation from rural to urban. Through an analysis of a broad range of verbal and visual sources, Smith shows how the discussion, design, and use of waterworks reveal how Americans framed their conceptions of urban democracy and how they understood the natural and the built environment, individual health and the well-being of society, and the qualities of time and history. As citizens debated matters of thirst, finance, and health, they also negotiated abstract questions of secular and sacred, real and ideal, immanent and transcendent, practical and moral. 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.
About the Author
Carl Smith is the Franklyn Bliss Synder Professor of English and American Studies and professor of history at Northwestern University. His books include three prize-winning volumes: "Chicago and the American Literary Imagination, 1880-1920"; "Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman"; and "The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City", the latter two published by the University of Chicago Press.
Reviews
"A fascinating history of the ideas about nature, health, citizenship, and time that informed the construction of some of America's earliest and greatest water systems. By demonstrating that our urban aqueducts are built out of ideas as much as bricks and mortar, Carl Smith ensures that a simple glass of water will never seem so simple again" – Michael Rawson, author of "Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston"
"A crucially important new chapter in US urban history. With impeccable research, Carl Smith seamlessly synthesizes nineteenth-century issues of politics, engineering, finance, aesthetics, law, and medicine – all focused on the creation of water systems in three major cities and all coalescing around the idea of the greater good of the public at large. 'City Water, City Life' speaks from history to this contemporary moment when the United States confronts, yet again, the debate over public versus private control of its water" – Cecelia Tichi, Vanderbilt University
"A wonderfully perceptive book that provides new insights into the development and implications of water supply in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Readers will find especially valuable Carl Smith's use of cultural, environmental, and health-related frames to construct an 'infrastructure of ideas' relating to water" – Joel A. Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University
"What a nuanced treatment of water! In 'City Water, City Life', Carl Smith breathes new life into our understanding of the impact of water supply through his study of Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. While we know a great deal about the systems themselves and how they were developed, Smith focuses on transcendent qualities of water befitting its central role in our lives. As such, he has expanded the audience who will derive a great deal of satisfaction from this study" – Martin V. Melosi, author of "The Sanitary City"
