The sanitary city: urban infrastructure in America from Colonial times to the present

By MARTIN V. MELOSI. xii and 578 pp. ; maps, diagrs. , ills. , bibliog. , index. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. 59. 95 (cloth), ISBN 0801861527. The title Sanitary City summons images of Gotham's street sweepers dressed in spotless white coats. In his massive history of urban sanitation services, Martin Melosi certainly introduces us to York City's turn-of-the-century uniformed street-cleaning corps, but he focuses on the unsanitary rather than the sanitary. Such is the enigma of the title. The impurity of drinking water prompted massive efforts to find and deliver potable product; the threat of disease from sewage forced cities to export this foul by-product; and the offensive qualities of refuse led to searches for healthy solutions. Melosi's task is to present the continual struggle to make the unsanitary city sanitary. In his own words, he seeks to provide a comprehensive history of water supply, wastewater, and solid-waste disposal systems in American cities from colonial times to the year 2000, with an analysis of their development, an assessment of their influence on urban growth, and an evaluation of their impact on the environment (p. 2). In this respect, his title is highly appropriate. Melosi, who has pedigree in political history and an extensive record as an urban and environmental historian, divides the book into three sections, based principally on the paradigms that guided sanitation practice: Age of Miasmas (1700s-1880), Bacteriological Revolution (1880-1945), and New Ecology (1945-2000). This apt organizational scheme is further refined in chapters that explore key developments in sanitation technology coupled with urbanization. Melosi's objective was sweeping, and his accomplishment encompasses the complete vista. Melosi emphasizes the successive waves of that coursed through the municipal-sanitation profession. Environmental historians often argue that massive tragedies are necessary to initiate major policy changes. But in the public works arena, Melosi suggests, it was not death or destruction that prompted actions but perceived crisis in water quantity or quality. Drinking water attracted attention most immediately and typically received substantial public support. Sewerage, less obvious need, lagged behind clean water as municipal concern, while garbage constantly lurked in the background. Whether in the age of miasmas or the time of the new ecology, crises were essential to spur efforts to meet public expectations of the day. I often wonder why more geographers have not investigated sanitation infrastructure; perhaps it is because such hidden service delivery is not part of the visible landscape. The Sanitary City points out the significance of these buried systems for urban growth. Increasing population density and sewage production degraded private wells and stimulated municipal searches for new water supplies. Extension of water supplies, and to lesser extent, sewerage lines, has helped shape urban expansion. Garbage collection, Melosi informs us, functions best through economies of density, becoming less efficient with urban sprawl. Such insights into the buried landscape exhibit the author's ability to examine the multiple and evolving relationships of public works with local politics, public finance, national environmental policies, and sanitary technologies. …