Cover Image: The 99% Invisible City

The 99% Invisible City

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

This book is a spin-off of my favorite podcast of a similar name - 99% Invisible. The name was derived from a Buckminster Fuller quote "Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable” and the goal of the book is to expose the unseen and overlooked aspects of design, architecture, and activity in the world. The book is so much more than a university lecture about design.. it is fascinating, captivating, and even amusing as it reveals the intriguing stories behind all the things we see around us on a daily basis but don’t really ever stop to consider the how or why behind them. I also love how these stories touch on social issues as well. The perfect book for non-fiction lovers and curious learners.

Was this review helpful?

I'm not sure "field guide" is the right term for this. It's a compilation of short (usually a page or less) essays about the historical and engineering reasons for unusual - and often unnoticed - quirks of city design. I have read some about this topic before, and I was pleased to know that I didn't know the majority of the information presented. I kept wanting the authorial voice to have a bit more character, but the essays themselves were interesting enough that I would recommend this to any nerdy reader.

Sample:
Some street canyons also have more surprising secondary impacts. Arrays of tall buildings can produce entrancing effects like the so-called Manhattan Solstice. This seasonal convergence aligns sunrises and sunsets with the narrow spaces framed by tall buildings on either side of city streets. While this phenomenon is not unique to New York, the picturesque impact can be particularly potent in flatter places like the Big Apple, which has largely unobstructed views out to the horizon (give or take a bit of New Jersey). Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has dubbed the phenomenon Manhattanhenge. Tyson has wondered whether future archeologists might think Manhattan’s gridded streets and avenues were built to honor seasonal solar alignments. Since this “rare and beautiful sight...happens to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball’s All Star break,” he mused, "future anthropologists might conclude that... the people who called themeselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball,” which wouldn’t be wildly inaccurate except the dates of these events move around from year to year.

Was this review helpful?

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I love 99% Invisible so I was really excited about this book! It contains fascinating stuff and is really interesting. However, two critiques: 1) if you've listened to the podcast, a lot of it is repetitive and 2) there are beautiful illustrations, however, as other reviewers have noted, this book would've benefited from more than the illustrations included. There's so many things mentioned that I want to know what it looked like but will have to google because the images in the book don't help, as they are artsy doodles.

Was this review helpful?

This book was so informative. I enjoyed the short sections, which we perfect to pick up and read a little at a time. I liked how the overall design matched with the black and yellow illustrations, but felt like actual photos of the things being explained would have added to a greater understanding of them.

Was this review helpful?

Lots of interesting facts about how certain features of cities came to be. The authors also have a podcast, but you don't have to be a listener to enjoy the stories. There are quite a few illustrations to supplement and explain the subject matter. Occasionally there were times where I thought there were socio-economic and cultural explanations that could have been explored more, but perhaps the book is best used as a starting place to delve deeper into the landscape of urban history and design.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Was this review helpful?

This was an interesting collection, slightly US centric but has other countries mentioned as well. It focuses on the more subtle points in our surroundings.
I was unable to read it completely in the time I was allowed the E ARC because it is not something that is read continuously, more like a coffee table book to increase conversation.
Since I did not finish it, I cannot rate it on other websites.

Was this review helpful?

So interesting so much fun learning about cities, architecture things to look for on a walk.Highly recommend this informative educational fun guide to city buildings.#netgalley#hmh

Was this review helpful?

This book is fantastic! it is perfect for anyone who wonders why cities are the way they are, and even more so if they have an interest in architecture!

Was this review helpful?

A fascinating look at the secrets that hide behind the metal, stone and glass facades of the world's cities, proving vital support for its inhabitants, yet going largely unnoticed as part of the urban tapestry. From buildings in NYC that are merely a facade for the subway ventilation systems behind them, to the evolution of cat's eyes for roads, to the meaning behind the random painted numbers and arrows you sometimes see on the ground, there is a lot of information packed into this book.
The level of detail does seem to vary by section - some are pretty comprehensive, but others felt frustratingly light and almost not worth including for the level of detail that they provided. I definitely felt that less would have been more in this case. A great book for dipping into, though, and discovering new things - it will make you look at your surroundings more closely and with more curiosity.

Was this review helpful?

From a long-time fan of the podcast: this was absolutely fascinating and wonderful! I love the breadth of topics they talked about; I've learned so much and definitely found things to look out for now on my walks (good quarantine reading in that way too!).

I will say the formatting means the ebook is very difficult to read, and I really struggled to read it on my phone.

Was this review helpful?

Curious minds rejoice! If you are fascinated by everyday things that surround you in the city then this is a book that you will love. It’s loaded with fun facts about elements in our built society that you see and interact with everyday.

“What are those little metal stars I see on the sides of buildings? What is that weird looking 20 foot towers randomly placed on the sidewalk and why are they there?” These are questions you may have asked yourself and the answers are in this book.

The book is based on the “99% Invisible” podcast which is available to you wherever you download podcasts. The book is an extension of of the radio show/podcast and not merely a rehashing of old episodes. It’s written in a conversational tone and chapters can be read out of order. Each story only takes about 5 to 10 minutes to read therefore it makes a great coffee table book.

It is filled with dozens of pen and ink illustrations but I would have loved to have seen more actual photos to truly grasp what is being discussed. I simply Googled items when I wanted to learn more or see pictures. The Bibliography is extensive and provides you with a sources to research and learn more if a particular story strikes a chord with you.

This is a collection of information that might easily be pushed aside in our minds but is truly fascinations once put in front of the reader. I highly recommend “The 99% Invisible City”.

Was this review helpful?

This was a really fun book that apparently is a spin-off from the Podcast of the same name. I now have something else to binge listen to, woot!

I don't really know how much of what is discussed in the book is really "invisible", other than the back-story behind many of the items discussed. For example, there is a Buddha that is in an otherwise vacant lot in California that was put there by the neighbor, because the vacant lot was being used as an unofficial dump and he was tired of it. He figured Buddha was neutral and might engender some respect to not dump garbage there. Not only was he right, but others started to perform upkeep and added to it, making it an unofficial shrine and tourist attraction!

There were also pretty cool facts, like how Japan breaks down their buildings floor by floor, from the top down or bottom up, re-using as much of the building materials as they can, to reduce waste and pollution. It takes more time than just knocking it down, but I would argue that it is safer and less wasteful than in other locations. I think that is the way demolitions should go, unless the building in question is a hazard and needs to come down quickly. In which case, why wasn't it taken down before it got to that point?

Also something that I didn't realize was that squirrels had to be re-introduced to cities in the parks. Once humans got their hands on the land and turned them into urban areas, some animals had to be re-introduced. Squirrels, pigeons, etc that we take for granted were not always present.

There was quite a bit in the book about how humans have done things that are less than savory re: destroying nature, so if you are sensitive to that, it will upset you in a few places, but it's kind of hard to have a non-fiction book about cities that doesn't discuss human stupidity.

Also some cool stuff, but not all is positive. Like roundabouts. The book touts them as great, I personally HATE them. They make a sort of sense, but most people driving in one have NO clue what they are doing and I always feel like I am taking my life in my hands when I drive in one.

This book is informative in a fun way and has short segments, so it can be picked up and put down as needed. Reading time comes in bits here and there for me, so that was a positive for me. I would recommend if you enjoy the Podcast, like to read about what humanity can do when they put their mind to it and like to learn in shorter snippets, kind of like form a bathroom reader, but more structured. 4, this would make a good holiday gift, stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

Was this review helpful?

Thank you Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for access to this arc.


I’ve never listened to the 99% Invisible podcast but this sounded intriguing so I requested an arc. Wow – there are a ton of interesting things packed into this book.

The next time I’m near a public building, I’ll have to look and see if I can spot the emergency boxes for firefighter access. I sure see enough of the sprayed street markings but now I know what they mean. I think there’s actually a “residential home” building hiding an electrical substation near me but cell phone towers are out in the open. The history of warning signs for biohazards was new to me and I’d never thought about the fact that 10,000 years in the future they will still need to be understood. But using bioluminescent cats to do it? Um, no.

I learned there are stravenues in Tucson, AZ and a city of the dead, south of San Francisco. Once SF passed an ordinance forcing graves to be removed from the city, the bodies were taken out but many of the tombstones remained and were repurposed throughout the city. Why are there so many palm trees in CA? What building floor numbers are reappearing in Vancouver, Canada? What did the drought of 2018 reveal in the fields of England, Ireland and Wales? What landscaping tradition that was brought to the New World to ape the elites of Europe is now being used to terrorize homeowners in some cities? Hint – soon crabby people might be yelling at kids to “Get off my xeriscape!” Learn it all here.

While most of the time cities try (or say they try) to make things livable for the people who live there, there are times when they deliberately don’t. Anti-loitering, anti-sitting, anti-peeing, and anti-sleeping devices have been installed for centuries. Some cities install different colored lighting to deter certain activities (pink to highlight acne in teens, blue so drug addicts can’t see their veins to shoot up). On the other hand, people sometimes try to adjust things to make life easier for their fellow citizens even if it’s without authorization. Sometimes cities end up adapting what these people do as – it works!

The book has some hand drawn sketches which I wish had actually been photographs to better see what I suppose was being illustrated. There are different sections which can be dipped into, read completely, or skipped if the information isn’t of interest. Discover the hidden stuff all around you and what it really means. B

Was this review helpful?

As a longtime listener of the podcast I was excited to read this book. Lots of fun facts and descriptions of fascinating design aspects found in many cities. Certainly helps me appreciate the art and design we find all around if we just keep out eyes open.
Easy to pick up and read just a few chapters at a time or to devour all at once.

Was this review helpful?

THE 99% INVISIBLE CITY

While I’ve only really gotten into the habit of listening to the Roman Mars’ podcast 99% Invisible in the past year or so, that’s been more than enough time for me to have become genuinely excited about The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design.

Authored by Mars and frequent collaborator Kurt Kohlstedt, the book is a wonderful companion to the podcast, providing much erudition about the design minutiae in our surroundings that we might take for granted everyday.

Much like the podcast from which it originates, there’s no denying that the appeal of The 99% Invisible City is largely in the many stories that its authors have curated to regale their readers. Some bring to life the wonder of the otherwise mundane, as on the topic of how Japan has some beautiful manhole covers. Others venture in the odd and strangely amusing, such as the island in Massachusetts that might someday be officially named Busta Rhymes Island. In short, this “field guide” is a treasure trove of interesting trivia about design, yes, but also about how the structures we create to shape our world evolve in interesting, complicated, and sometimes contradictory ways.

More than this, a large part of the book’s charm—again, like the podcast from which it is derived—owes to Mars’ and Kohlstedt’s unique point of view, and not just on matters of design per se. I find that every so often they make some observation or other that just nails it, even if on a tangent. “A skyscraper,” they write, to cite one example, “is a machine that is designed to turn land into money,” which is as elegant in its simplicity as it is in its indictment of the commercial imperatives of urban development. Or my single favorite pair of sentences from the entire book: “When you’re a kid you always want the window seat on a plane. Then, for most of us, your heart dies as you get older and you opt for the convenience of the aisle seat.”

Nailed it.

The book itself is beautifully designed, with amazing hand drawn illustrations that suit the book’s conceit as a field guide about urban design. The trade-off, however, is that quite a number of things that Mars and Kohstedt write about arguably would have been better served with accompanying photographs. So readers should expect to look up a few things every now and again while reading the book.

From the inconspicuous to the conspicuous, on matters of infrastructure or architecture, or even geography and urbanism (a personal favorite), The 99% Invisible City will have readers looking at their built-up surroundings in a new light.

Was this review helpful?

I received a free digital copy of this book via NetGalley for an honest review.

99% Invisible is consistently one of my favorite podcasts. Even when episodes are focused on topics that I know something about, I always learn something new--and more frequently, the episodes highlight things I've never considered in any depth or even never noticed at all.

The 99% Invisible City is partially a book version of the podcast--that is not to say that the book can be read in lieu of listening to the podcast, because it's far more an accompaniment than a replacement. It's a collection of short histories and stories about various aspects of the built environment (and more), and it's a lot of fun. It lacks something of the charm of the podcast, I think partly because the brevity of the histories (no more than a page or two for most) don't seem to have the depth of the stories usually covered on the podcast. But it's still very enjoyable, and it's a great format for reading bits of here-and-there even if you are not inclined to sit down and read it cover-to-cover.

The stories are arranged thematically, and are short and very readable. There's a lot of geographic breadth, too--and it's easy to learn something new even about your own (metaphorical) back yard. For example, even though I grew up fairly near Edward N. Hines Drive and Hines Park and was familiar with the name, it was not until reading this book that I learned that Edward N. Hines, as a member of the Wayne County Roads Commission, originated the now pretty much universal practice of painting lane markings on roads!

The book is intended to be read both by fans of the podcast and people who have never listened to it, though there are enough nods to the podcast that it may be marginally better to have listened to at least one episode. Still, it should be interesting and entertaining even to people who are not familiar with the podcast--and I suspect that many non-listeners who pick up the book may be inclined to give the show a listen, too.

Was this review helpful?

If you like architecture and its quirks & features, you may want to read this book. I didn't know there is a podcast of 99% (not sure if I'm gonna listen) but if you regularly listen, not sure if there is something new for you (I found randomly an essay from book previously web-published).
For us others, it contained a lot of interesting quirks about city architecture (mostly USA). For example, did you know that there is a building in UK, nicknamed the Dalek? (and that it was making typhoon-like winds in the street below?). Or that Colosseum in Rome was just few centuries back covered in trees, shrubs and grasses?

I'd only like to see more pictures of presented things so I don't need to google everything, although I'm not a biggest fan of these kind of illustrations, sorry. Just not my style.

Was this review helpful?

I really enjoyed this book. If you are inquisitive and like wandering around cities, noticing little details that seem to pop out at you-- sometimes strange or puzzling-- this book may take some of the mystery out of the equation. Other readers will find themselves searching for cryptic signs and details they'd never noticed before. I would have appreciated more visual documentation to go along with the narrative but overall I found this book fascinating.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Was this review helpful?

Design is one of those things that one struggles to define, even though its one of the most prominent things around us. I did an internship at a design museum a few years ago, and while I have a better grip on it than I did before, I came out of it still hardly knowing how to describe it to others. Everyday design is fascinating to me. Designs are good when you don't even recognise they are there, when they are doing the job they are meant to do without drawing any attention. One of the first things this book talks about are streetlights, and how they have a specially designed base to minimize damage on both ends should a car accidentally drive into it. Something we all see everyday, something we can all recognise, and probably at one point thought to ourselves "huh, I wonder why it looks like that," but not thinking any more of it. That's design for you.

While I do find nearly all aspects of design fascinating, even I found a lot of this book to be quite dense. I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't consider at least some of it dry and/or boring. There is evidently so much research (as per the author's note at the end, over ten years' worth) put into the book that it almost feels like the authors are shoving in as much as possible. The bibliography at the end is insane and very impressive. I liked the way the book was split into sections and how they seamlessly led from one topic to the next. One thing I wish the book did however was be a bit more specific in its headings. I found that instead of simply stating the object/system, it would be listed under the problem that the design needed to solve - which is fine in theory, but because of the aforementioned density and technical speak, it sometimes took a few paragraphs to understand what I was even reading about (however, when they mentioned raccoon-proof garbage cans and instead named the section "Trash Pandas', I had a giggle). As always with non-fiction books, always, always include more pictures. I get it. There's a certain aesthetic to having an artist artfully render sketches in a designed fashion to match the content of the book, but I just want to know what the thing looks like in real life, not an artist's version of it.

Overall though, I found this book fascinating. Design is so, so cool, and largely goes unnoticed by the general population. In Japan they often put blue lighting in some public restrooms so that intravenous drug users would have a harder time finding their veins. There is an excellent chapter on hostile design too, which is fascinating and probably my favourite part of the book. I'll admit right now that I haven't listened to the podcast this book is associated with, but I'll definitely be checking it out. If there is even half the amount of effort put into it than this book has, it's gotta be pretty good.

Was this review helpful?

A nicely illustrated overview of basic architectural and civil engineering objects and design in use in modern cities, this book offers short histories and vignettes about relay stations, urban reuse, warning symbols, manhole covers, and other things we encounter in daily city life. The histories are interesting enough, but rarely include the systemic issues that have contributed to the reasons for why many things as they are; a notable omission is the fact that overpasses across the Southern State Parkway were designed to keep buses (implicitly only used by BIPOC) from accessing the beaches the Parkway went to. A section on water fountains focuses on those in the UK, sidestepping discussion of the segregated fountains of Jim Crow America. Coverage of claiming stakes in the 1800s in the US briefly mentions that the "government began to force indigenous peoples into an area called Indian Territory [....] later, tribes were again forced to relocate." This wasn't relocation: it was genocide. There *is* a section of curb cuts, a major accessibility issue, but it treats disability activists as inspiration porn. Overall, this is a pleasant and interesting but a bit superficial book; those who enjoy it will want to search out more detailed and nuanced materials for further reading.

Was this review helpful?