At a moment when some city dwellers are moving to less populated areas, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) reads like a love letter to all things urban, an invitation to look a little longer at the design stories that have changed how cities work.
The layout of the book, which moves through different categories of the urban environment, from the inconspicuous to larger systems like infrastructure, is also intentional. It’s meant to first help readers notice how things work, says Kohlstedt, so that by the end, you’ll know “how you can become involved in your own city, or at least understand who is doing what and why more clearly.”
And that starts with my next walk through my own neighborhood. v
By Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
