The 99% Invisible City
A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
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The 99% Invisible City
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Narrated by:
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Roman Mars
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Written by:
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Kurt Kohlstedt
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Roman Mars
About this listen
From the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast, comes a guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities. Narrated by Roman Mars, with a bonus Q&A and a Full Episode of 99% Invisible.
Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?
Or 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?
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.
Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries, The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.
©2020 Roman Mars (P)2020 HarperCollins PublishersYou may also enjoy...
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- Written by: Jane Jacobs, Jason Epstein - introduction
- Narrated by: Donna Rawlins
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A must-read for any avid Reader.
- By Monique Osborne on 2020-04-25
Written by: Jane Jacobs, and others
-
Paved Paradise
- How Parking Explains the World
- Written by: Henry Grabar
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 6
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don’t resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Indeed, in the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed—and in some cases demolished—our homes and our cities in a Sisyphean quest for cheap and convenient car storage.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Preaching to the converted!
- By Angela Augsbury on 2023-06-02
Written by: Henry Grabar
-
Walkable City
- How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
- Written by: Jeff Speck
- Narrated by: Jeff Speck
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that’s easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great introduction to smart city design
- By Amazon Customer on 2022-06-25
Written by: Jeff Speck
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The Power Broker
- Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
- Written by: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 66 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 95
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 96
Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
-
5 out of 5 stars
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Thorough and incredible
- By Anonymous User on 2018-04-01
Written by: Robert A. Caro
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Strong Towns
- A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity
- Written by: Charles L. Marohn Jr.
- Narrated by: Matthew Boston
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he cofounded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
They need pauses between sections
- By Client d'Amazon on 2022-01-02
Written by: Charles L. Marohn Jr.
-
Metropolis
- A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention
- Written by: Ben Wilson
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 18
In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Masterful!
- By Pierre Gauthier on 2021-03-29
Written by: Ben Wilson
What listeners say about The 99% Invisible City
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
Highley recomend for fans of the podcast
You know that feeling you get when your listening to a 99% invisible podcast and you start to feel it winding down and you get real sad because you know its going to end soon and your going to have to wait a whole nother week for a new episode? This is like a never ending episode of 99 pi featuring only Roman Mars. While it understandabley lacks some of the production value of the actual podcast because you know.... Its an audio book... its a content rich experience with both familiar and new knlowledge nuggets for all you fellow nerds out there. 12 out of 10 highly recomended
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Eric Groot
- 2022-06-28
Good collection of stories
This a great audio book for my morning commute. short 4-10min long chapters with interesting stories. it doesn't go into as much depth as the podcast but I like it. An easy listen and very good narration.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Pierre Gauthier
- 2020-11-30
Enjoyable and Informative!
This book, based on a podcast, discusses urban phenomena that completely pass under the radar. The first chapter, for instance, examines the coloured lines that appear at times on sidewalks and asphalt. A full discussion is provided, including what colour refers to what specific infrastructure.
Overall, the contents prove very original and professionally researched. Some may wish however that the book were more structured, as topics currently appear in what many may consider rather haphazard fashion.
In the audio version, two bonuses are generously provided:
• a substantial and enlightening conversation between the two authors, Roman Mars, who also warmly acts as narrator for the whole book, and Kurt Kohlstedt, who self-describes as a “design nerd”;
• a full episode of the podcast, dealing with Sears Roebuck’s kit houses of the turn of the 20th century, that is just fascinating.
Globally, this offering is warmly recommended to all interested in city life and design.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- CKH
- 2021-06-07
interesting
You are not missing the illustrations by getting this book in audio. This California centric urban planning book has the most irritatingly vague diagrams and drawings.
Other than that, if you listen to 99% invisible a lot of the information has already been covered. It has one of the podcasts at the end just in case you are not familiar with the work.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2021-07-02
Deeply needed a PDF
The concept of the book was stunning, wonderfully narrated as well, but without any visual reference to lean on, the listener is left to search these topics themselves which defeats one the main appeals of audiobooks. Had they provided a PDF to accompany the book, this would have been a memorable book.
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1 person found this helpful