The Works: Anatomy of a City offers a cross-section of the hidden infrastructure of New York City, using beautiful, innovative graphic images combined with short, clear text explanations to answer all the questions about the way things work in a modern city. Executive Vice President of NYC’s Economic Development Corporation, Kate Ascher describes the technologies that keep the city functioning, as well as the people who support them—the pilots that bring the ships in over the Narrows sandbar, the sandhogs who are currently digging the third water tunnel under Manhattan, the television engineer who scales the Empire State Building’s antenna for routine maintenance, and the electrical wizards who maintain the century-old system that delivers power to subways.
Kate Ascher
Kate Ascher is a partner at BuroHappold Engineering, where she leads their cities group, as well as the Milstein Professor of Urban Development at Columbia GSAPP. She formerly served as assistant director at PANYNJ and as executive vice president of the Economic Development Corporation for City of New York. She is the author of numerous books, among them Skyscraper Museum bestsellers The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper and The Works: Anatomy of a City.