The 99% Invisible City

'99% Invisible...is completely wonderful and entertaining and beautifully produced...' Ira Glass, This American Life

'The hugely inventive 99% Invisible treats the design of everyday things like a forensic science.' WIRED

This is 99% Invisible.

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A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast

Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?

Or stopped to ponder who gets to name the streets we walk along?

Or what the story is 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 and beautiful line drawings throughout, 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.

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You are about to see stories everywhere, you beautiful nerd. Now get out there.

'If you've ever wondered why our world is the way it is, this show has your answers' The Hustle

“The ideal companion for city buffs, who'll come away seeing the streets in an entirely different light. - Kirkus”

The ideal companion for city buffs, who'll come away seeing the streets in an entirely different light. - Kirkus
Here is a field guide, a boon, a bible, for the urban curious. Your city's secret anatomy laid bare -- a hundred things you look at but don't see, see but don't know. Each entry is a compact, surprising story, a thought piece, an invitation to marvel. Together, they are almost transformative. To know why things are as they are adds a satisfying richness to daily existence. This book is terrific, just terrific. - Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Grunt
I can hear Roman's dulcet tones as I read through this book. It's absolutely fascinating to get an in depth look at the city through their eyes, my walks will never be the same again. 100% brilliant. - Roma Agrawal, author of Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures
We usually define cities in terms of their bigness, so it's easy to forget that our daily experience of any city is made up of countless tiny, intimate encounters. Just as Jane Jacobs did fifty years ago, Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt provide a new way of seeing urban life, finding secrets and surprises behind every sewer grate, storefront, and street sign. - Michael Bierut, design critic and author of How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World
Conversational, bite-size entries [and] beautiful tricolor illustrations . . . A field guide for anywhere. - Booklist
The 99% Invisible City brings into view the fascinating but often unnoticed worlds we walk and drive through every day, and to read it is to feel newly alive and aware of your place in the world. This book made me laugh, and it made me cry, and it reminded me to always read the plaque.' - John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All The Way Down
[A] diverse and enlightening book . . . The 99% Invisible City is altogether fresh and imaginative when it comes to thinking about urban spaces. - The New York Times Book Review
'The Invisible City is not a book, but a pair of magic glasses that transform the mundane city around you into a vibrant museum of human ingenuity.' - Justin McElroy, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Adventure Zone

Roman Mars (Author)

Roman Mars is creator and host of 99% Invisible, the wildly popular podcast exploring architecture and design, for which he produced the most successful crowdfunding campaigns for a podcast in Kickstarter history. Fast Company named Mars one of the 100 Most Creative People in 2013 and he was a TED main stage speaker in 2015.

Kurt Kohlstedt (Author)

Kurt Kohlstedt has written about design and built environments for over a decade, since founding the online magazine WebUrbanist in 2007. He is digital director and producer of 99% Invisible.

99% Invisible (Author)

99% Invisible is a podcast about all the thought that goes into the things we don't think about - the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world. With nearly 300 million downloads, 99% Invisible is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. It has won a Third Coast Festival award for Best Documentary, two Podcast Academy awards, and two Webby Awards for Best Podcast and Best Host.

This is 99% Invisible. __ A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean? Or stopped to ponder who gets to name the streets we walk along? Or what the story is 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 and beautiful line drawings throughout, 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.__ You are about to see stories everywhere, you beautiful nerd. Now get out there. 'If you've ever wondered why our world is the way it is, this show has your answers' The Hustle '99% Invisible...is completely wonderful and entertaining and beautifully produced...' Ira Glass, This American Life 'The hugely inventive 99% Invisible treats the design of everyday things like a forensic science.' WIRED

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