This book is dedicated to Nicola Freeman Matthew William Panchyk and to all children who ask
Acknowledgments We would first like to thank Lorraine Whitman the executive director of the Salvadori Center for orga nizing a focus group of teachers to read comment on and make suggestions for improving the book Many of their suggestions were extremely valuable and helped us raise the quality and usefulness of the book We also want to thank teachers Jamil Azim Manette Gampel Ken Harris Francis Osei and Bernard Winter for their efforts and constructive crit icism and thank Julia Goldschmidt for compiling notes of the focus group sessions We also appreci ated the support provided for the focus groups by the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems ICIS at New York University’s Robert Wagner Graduate School of Public Service funded by NSF Finally we would like to thank our editor Cynthia Sherry for having
Introduction magine that you lived in a place where there were no pipes to carry water to your faucet and your toi let no pipes to carry away your waste no wires to power your appliances and computers and to light your home no wires to carry your telephone conver sations and your Internet messages no roads on which to drive no railroad tracks to guide trains and no bridges to cross rivers Would that be a place where you would want to live We are certain you answered no and rejected the idea of living without infrastructure You certainly see roads every day and you have seen railroad tracks and perhaps telephone and power wires suspended from wooden poles But much of the infrastructure of the city or town or vil lage in which you live is invisible the pipes and wires are usually buried underground or hidden behind walls The power plant that supplies electricity through your wires is often so far away that it might as well be on another world The reservoirs that col lect the water you need are usually hidden in the hills far from where you live The story of infrastructure teaches us about the history of human development from the time we
