Urban Machinery investigates the technological dimension of modernEuropean cities, vividly describing the most dramatic changes in the urbanenvironment over the last century and a half. Written by leading scholars from thehistory of technology, urban history, sociology and science, technology, andsociety, the book views the European city as a complex construct entangled withtechnology. The chapters examine the increasing similarity of modern cities andtheir technical infrastructures (including communication, energy, industrial, andtransportation systems) and the resulting tension between homogenization andcultural differentiation. The contributors emphasize the concept of circulation--theprocess by which architectural ideas, urban planning principles, engineeringconcepts, and societal models spread across Europe as well as from the United Statesto Europe. They also examine the parallel process of appropriation--how thesesystems and practices have been adapted to prevailing institutional structures andcultural preferences. Urban Machinery, with contributions by scholars from eightcountries, and more than thirty illustrations (many of them rare photographs neverpublished before), includes studies from northern and southern and from eastern andwestern Europe, and also discusses how European cities were viewed from theperiphery (modernizing Turkey) and from the United States.ContributorsHans Buiter, Paolo Capuzzo, Noyan Din?kal, Cornelis Disco, P?l Germuska, Mikael H?rd, MartinaHe?ler, Dagmara Jajesniak-Quast, Andrew Jamison, Per Lundin, Thomas J. Misa, DieterSchott, Marcus StippakMikael H?rd is Professor of History at Darmstadt University ofTechnology. His books include The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology: Discourses on Modernity, 1900-1939 (coedited with Andrew Jamison; MIT Press, 1998).Thomas J. Misa is ERA-Land Grant Professor of the History of Technology at theUniversity of Minnesota, where he directs the Charles Babbage Institute. His booksinclude Modernity and Technology (coedited with Philip Brey and Andrew Feenberg; MITPress, 2003).