You can't make it better until you make it work. In America, we don't create bad infrastructure-we just fail to maintain it. The crumbling infrastructure of US cities and towns is often overshadowed by budget concerns, national turmoil, and global crises. As a leader in your local government, you know this better than anyone. But progress is possible. In “Mission Control”, technologist and entrepreneur Benjamin Schmidt shares how you can join...

"A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast." -- Have you ever stopped to consider why you don't see metal fire escapes on new buildings? Or pondered the story behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships? Mars and Kohlstedt reveal the stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse....

"In 1853 the French emperor Louis Napoleon inaugurated a vast and ambitious program of public works, directed by Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine. Haussmann's renovation of Paris would transform the old medieval city of squalid slums and disease-ridden alleyways into a "City of Light" characterized by wide boulevards, apartment blocks, parks, squares and public monuments, new railway stations and department stores, and a new system...

How was Manhattan constructed, from the early Dutch settlements to modern skyscrapers and office buildings? The precise line drawings and clearly written text in this book provide detailed information on exactly how Manhattan developed above ground - intricate construction techniques such as excavating a site, elevating the floors of a skyscraper and putting together a massive crane section by section are carefully explained; and below, how the sewers,...

"Each day, every single person in the United States discards about five pounds of waste. Be it a bottle that gets placed in a recycling bin or a piece of paper crumpled and tossed into the waste bin, every bit of the daily 1.6 billion pounds cast-off has a story. This book is full of those stories. It will wake you up and give you hope. As the author, Duncan Watson, says, 'More people in American recycle than vote. Recycling is more popular than Democracy!'"...