Science and the City
The Mechanics Behind the Metropolis
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Cities are a big deal. More people now live in them than don't, and with a growing world population, the urban jungle is only going to get busier in the coming decades. But how often do we stop to think about what makes our cities work?
Cities are built using some of the most creative and revolutionary science and engineering ideas – from steel structures that scrape the sky to glass cables that help us communicate at the speed of light – but most of us are too busy to notice. Science and the City is your guidebook to that hidden world, helping you to uncover some of the remarkable technologies that keep the world's great metropolises moving.
Laurie Winkless takes us around cities in six continents to find out how they're dealing with the challenges of feeding, housing, powering and connecting more people than ever before. In this book, you'll meet urban pioneers from history, along with today's experts in everything from roads to time, and you will uncover the vital role science has played in shaping the city around you. But more than that, by exploring cutting-edge research from labs across the world, you'll build your own vision of the megacity of tomorrow, based on science fact rather than science fiction.
Science and the City is the perfect read for anyone curious about the world they live in.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this cheerful addition to the how-things-work genre, physicist and science writer Winkless reminds readers that urban areas are now home to more than half the human race and use an increasing proportion of the Earth's natural resources, so it behooves people to know how they operate. Winkless enthusiastically delivers eight chapters that combine expert interviews with lucid explanations of city infrastructure (buildings, energy sources, water supply) and transportation (roads, cars, mass transport). Readers will encounter good elucidations of how skyscrapers are built, subways are dug, and sewage is carried off, but Winkless spends more time on the future in which cities must deal with overpopulation, global warming, and resource exhaustion. Tirelessly curious, she turns up an array of dazzling developments in the works, including driverless cars, pollution-free sources of locally generated energy, and an advanced "Internet of Things" in which every device anticipates personal needs. Of course, many of these are laboratory curiosities and likely to remain so. Winkless takes her material seriously, but her aim is accessibility, so her prose is dense with jokes, amusing asides, and cute footnotes befitting a "friendly science guide." Even readers who aren't enamored of her style will encounter fascinating information on how cities function and how they might do better.
