The 99% invisible city A field guide to the hidden world of everyday design

Roman Mars

Book - 2020

"A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast." --

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Subjects
Genres
Trivia and miscellanea
Published
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Roman Mars (author)
Other Authors
Kurt Kohlstedt (author)
Physical Description
x, 384 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 356-375) and index.
ISBN
9780358126607
  • Introduction
  • Inconspicuous. Ubiquitous ; Camouflage ; Accretions
  • Conspicuous. Identity ; Safety ; Signage
  • Infrastructure. Civil ; Water ; Technology ; Roadways ; Public
  • Architecture. Liminal ; Materials ; Regulations ; Towers ; Foundations ; Heritage
  • Geography. Delineations ; Configurations ; Designations ; Landscapes ; Synanthropes
  • Urbanism. Hostilities ; Interventions ; Catalysts
  • Outro.
  • 1. Inconspicuous
  • Ubiquitous
  • Official graffiti: utility codes
  • Initialed impressions: sidewalk markings
  • Planned failure: breakaway posts
  • A little safer: emergency boxes
  • Camouflage
  • Thornton's scent bottle: stink pipes
  • Exhaustive outlets: fake facades
  • Catalytic diverters: ventilation buildings
  • Neighborhood transformers: electrical substations
  • Cellular biology: wireless towers
  • Resourceful artifice: production wells
  • Accretions
  • Seeing stars: anchor plates
  • Scarchitecture: urban infill
  • Lines of sight: relay nodes
  • Thomassons: maintained remains
  • Accumulative controversy: love locks
  • Spolic of war: constructive reuse
  • 2. Conspicuous
  • Identity
  • Vexillology rules: municipal flags
  • Public bodies: civic monuments
  • Fonts of knowledge: historical plaques
  • Distinguished features: that fancy shape
  • Safety
  • Mixed signals: traffic lights
  • Visibility aids: retroreflective studs
  • Checkered past: recognition patterns
  • Memorable but meaningless: warning symbols
  • Signs of times: shelter markers
  • Signage
  • Broad strokes: hand-painted graphics
  • tube benders: neon lights
  • Sky dancers: inflatable figures
  • Outstanding directors: production placards
  • Minded businesses: absent advertising
  • 3. Infrastructure
  • Civic
  • Bureaucracy inaction: incidental bridge
  • Good delivery: postal service
  • Water
  • Rounding down: manhole covers
  • Upwardly potable: drinking fountains
  • Reversing course: waste management
  • Circling back: subsurface cisterns
  • Apples to oysters: flood mitigation
  • Technology
  • Fine lines: utility poles
  • Alternated currents: power grids
  • Moonlight towers: street lights
  • Dialed back: electricity meters
  • Network effects: internet cables
  • Roadways
  • Accelerating change: painting centerlines
  • Shifting responsibility: blaming jaywalkers
  • Key indicators: crash testing
  • Cemented divisions: lane separators
  • Extra turns: safer intersections
  • Circulating logic: rotary junctions
  • Incomplete stops: calming traffic
  • Reversing gears: changing lanes
  • Public
  • On verges: interstitial spaces
  • Crossing over: pedestrian signals
  • Sharrowed routes: cycling lanes
  • Congestion costs: easing gridlock
  • Extravehicular activities: naked streets
  • 4. Architecture
  • Liminal
  • Imperfect security: locked entries
  • Open and shut: revolving doors
  • Improved egress: emergency exits
  • Materials
  • Stolen facades: recycling brick
  • Aggregate effects: cracking concrete
  • Hybrid solutions: amassing timber
  • Regulations
  • Secular orders: taxable units
  • formative setbacks: mansard roofs
  • Heaven to hell: property limits
  • Towers
  • Braking good: modern elevators
  • Cladding skeletons: curtain walls
  • Topping out: skyscraper races
  • Unanticipated loads: managing crises
  • Perspective matters: redefining skylines
  • Beyond above: engineering icons
  • Grouped dynamics: street canyons
  • Foundations
  • Vernacular enclaves: international districts
  • Reality checks: service centers
  • Approachable ducks: commercial signifies
  • Competitive starchitecture: contrasting additions
  • Heritage
  • Heathen's gate: overlapping narratives
  • Landmark ruling: historic preservation
  • Recrowned jewel: complex restoration
  • Architectural license: faithless reconstruction
  • Unnatural selection: subjective stabilization
  • Faded attraction: alluring abandonment
  • Runed landscapes: peripheral traces
  • Unbuilding codes: premeditated deconstruction
  • 5. Geography
  • Delineations
  • Points of origin: zero markers
  • Edge cases: boundary stones
  • Defining moments: standardized time
  • Road boosters: national highways
  • Configurations
  • Rounding errors: Jeffersonian grids
  • Unassigned lands: patchwork plans
  • Rectilinear revelations: coordinated layouts
  • Good examples: reconfigured super-blocks
  • Standard deviations: growth patterns
  • Designations
  • Citations needed: informal geonyms
  • Hybrid acronames: neighborhood monikers
  • Calculated omissions: unlucky numbers
  • Deliberated errors: fictitious entries
  • Misplaced locations: null island
  • Paved ways: Tucson stravenues
  • Accessible voids: nameless places
  • Landscapes
  • Graveyard shifts: pastoral parks
  • Trailing spaces: converted greenways
  • Courting palms: street trees
  • Lawn enforcement: owned backyards
  • Lofty treescrapers: ungrounded plants
  • Synanthropes
  • Naturalized denizens: common squirrels
  • Ghost streams: fish stories
  • Home to roost: unloved doves
  • Raccoon resistance: trash pandas
  • Unmanned lands: wildlife corridors
  • 6. Urbanism
  • Hostilities
  • Loved park: dubious skateblockers
  • Urine trouble: discouraging spikes
  • Obstinate objects: discomforting seats
  • Cities of light: dissuasive illumination
  • Targeting demographics: disruptive sounds
  • Exterior motives: deceptive deterrents
  • Interventions
  • Guerrilla fixation: unsanctioned shield
  • - Drawing attention: viral signage
  • Asking permission: open hydrants
  • Seeking forgiveness: embattled boulders
  • Legitimizing action: middle way
  • Catalysts
  • Ramping up: cutting curbs
  • Cycling through: clearing cars
  • Driving away: appropriating parklets
  • Grating on: grassroots gardening
  • Bumping out: collaborative peacemaking.
Review by Booklist Review

Based on the podcast, 99% Invisible, this book highlights the underappreciated aspects of our built environment, from urban oddities like a traffic light in Syracuse, New York, that stacks green above red in a display of Irish pride to the inflatable figures that writhe outside of car dealerships. Each curiosity is discussed in conversational, bite-size entries. Fans of Mars and Kholstedt's podcast will find the stories familiar, though they've been trimmed down and are accompanied by Patrick Vale's beautiful tricolor illustrations. The book is organized into six thematic chapters with titles like "Inconspicuous" and "Infrastructure," but Mars and Kohlstedt encourage readers to find their own way through the book, comparing that approach to "desire paths," spontaneous trails shaped by pedestrians rather than planners. This analogy is a good one, encouraging readers to discover the unsung aspects of their surroundings, wherever they may be. Though the entries tend to offer examples from big cities like Philadelphia and Oakland, phenomena like utility codes and recycled brick are found in many places, making The 99% Invisible City a field guide for anywhere.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A user-friendly guide to all the overlooked things that make urban civilization tick. If you're an infrastructure nerd, a reader of David Macauley, Kate Ascher, or Brian Hayes, then you know that under the sidewalks of your town or city lies an endlessly complex world of pipes, cables, wires, and tunnels. If you want to understand the language spoken in that world, then this book is for you. Building from their popular podcast of the same name, Mars and Kohlstedt explore the occult grammar of the city, much of it hiding in plain sight. What are those boxes at eye level that you see on so many buildings? Well, "firefighters essentially have a skeleton key that opens all of the boxes in their area." Within a "Knox box" is in turn a copy of the master key for any given building. How is it that one can breathe inside New York City's Holland Tunnel, which burrows under the Hudson River? The authors explain the process and note that when it was built, using air shafts and aboveground ventilation towers, the air quality in the tunnel was better than that out on the street, adding, "to be fair, that is setting quite a low bar." Numerous other urban elements are grist for the authors' amiably churning mill: Those metal stars on the fronts of old brick buildings are the ends of truss rods that prevent the walls from sagging; things are named as they are via complex bureaucratic interactions; the pedestrian-friendly city that allows e-scooters becomes less pedestrian-friendly. Mars and Kohlstedt operate without an agenda other than to share their enthusiasm for urban design ("You can learn so much from reading sidewalk markings--especially when they're spelled right"), and there's a pleasant and useful lesson on every page. The ideal companion for city buffs, who'll come away seeing the streets in an entirely different light. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.