Tag Archives: infrastructure

Strong Towns: the Book

Posted on January 22, 2025 by smellincoffee

Years ago I heard an engineer being interviewed on a podcast about urbanism, castigating his fellow planners and engineers for supporting an approach to urbanism that was dishonest and financially ruinous. This engineer, Chuck Marohn, had recently started a blog … Continue reading →

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The Way to Go

Posted on March 6, 2024 by smellincoffee

Longtime readers here know that I love reading about transportation, and not just Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Ships, horses, bicycles — if it moves, I’ll follow and read books about it happily. A few years ago I delighted in the … Continue reading →

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The 99% Invisible City

Posted on June 27, 2023 by smellincoffee

The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Ordinary Design© 2020 Roman Mars400 pages I’ve spent many hours in two of my city’s oldest buildings — one a church, the other a mixed-use Italianate beauty turned … Continue reading →

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Confessions of a Recovering Engineer

Posted on September 12, 2022 by smellincoffee

Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town© 2021 Chuck Marohn 272 pages Chuck Marohn is a licensed engineer and urban planner who, in 2008,  began sharing his concerns that the current approach to both building and financing … Continue reading →

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A Walk Around the Block

Posted on January 15, 2021 by smellincoffee

A Walk Around the Block: Stoplight Secrets, Mischievous Squirrels, Manhole Mysteries & Other Stuff You See Every Day (And Know Nothing About)© 2020 Spike Carlsen336 pages One of my favorite books to think back on is Scott Huler’s On the … Continue reading →

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Door to Door

Posted on March 22, 2018 by smellincoffee

Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation© 2016 Edward Humes384 pages Are you interested in the Port of Los Angeles? Do you hate cars and find hushed reports of every auto death in a single day great … Continue reading →

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Empires of Light

Posted on December 9, 2017 by smellincoffee

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World © 2004 Jill Jonnes464 pages Empires of Light is less a history of how the United States became electrified and more a biography of three electrical titans – … Continue reading →

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Infrastructure: A Field Guide

Posted on September 14, 2017 by smellincoffee

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape© 1999, 2014 Brian Hayes544 pages Here at last is a book for those of us who constantly gaze out the car window at the fixtures on utility poles, or drums mounted in … Continue reading →

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The Works

Posted on November 25, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Works: Anatomy of a City© 2005  Kate Ascher240 pages Cities are, for my money, mankind’s most astonishing invention. Their complexity is stupefying — system within system, handling tons of material at any given time, whether the subject is cars … Continue reading →

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The Road Taken

Posted on November 16, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure336 pages© 2016 Henry Petroski What, exactly, is The Road Taken?   Its title declares it a history, which is mostly true. It does have a bounty of historic sketches on the … Continue reading →

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