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 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.