一个城市不仅仅是一个公民群体，一个建筑和街道的布局，或者一个政治、经济和社会机构的安排。它也是一个理念的基础设施，是对创建这座城市的人们的信仰、价值观和愿望的支持。在《城市水，城市生活》一书中，著名历史学家卡尔·史密斯通过对17世纪90年代至19世纪60年代期间费城、波士顿和芝加哥第一批成功的自来水厂系统的发展进行深入研究，探索了这一概念。通过考察19世纪意识中的水的位置，史密斯阐明了在美国城市化的伟大时代，城市居民是如何看待自己的。但城市水、城市生活不仅仅是城市化的历史。这也是一种令人耳目一新的思考，认为水是一种必需品，是商业和工业的资源，是我们如何定义我们的文明的一个基本和核心部分。
City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago
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.
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