Vital Connections: Melbourne And Its Board Of Works 1891-1991
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: First Edition Thus
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
When a city grows, it is not its skyline but its hidden arteries — the pipes, reservoirs, and tunnels buried beneath the streets — that determine whether it thrives or falters. Vital Connections: Melbourne and its Board of Works 1891-1991 chronicles one hundred years of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, the ambitious public authority that quietly shaped the health, hygiene, and urban expansion of one of Australia's greatest cities. Authors Tony Dingle and Carolyn Rasmussen present a richly detailed institutional history that traces the Board's evolution from its nineteenth-century mandate to deliver clean water and efficient sewerage to a rapidly industrialising metropolis, through to its transformation into a sprawling environmental and planning authority by the close of the twentieth century. Written with scholarly rigour yet accessible prose, this centenary history argues that the Board of Works was far more than a municipal utility — it was a powerful agent of social and environmental change whose decisions fundamentally altered the landscape and lives of Melburnians. Dingle and Rasmussen draw on extensive archival research to illuminate the political battles, engineering triumphs, and public health crises that punctuated the Board's century of operation, illustrating how infrastructure is never merely technical but always deeply political. For anyone with an interest in Australian urban history, civic governance, or the hidden mechanics of modern city life, Vital Connections raises a compelling question: who truly builds a city?
Author: Tony Dingle & Carolyn Rasmussen
Format: Hardback
Published: 1991, McPhee Gribble
Genre: Australian history
Edition: First Edition Thus
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
When a city grows, it is not its skyline but its hidden arteries — the pipes, reservoirs, and tunnels buried beneath the streets — that determine whether it thrives or falters. Vital Connections: Melbourne and its Board of Works 1891-1991 chronicles one hundred years of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, the ambitious public authority that quietly shaped the health, hygiene, and urban expansion of one of Australia's greatest cities. Authors Tony Dingle and Carolyn Rasmussen present a richly detailed institutional history that traces the Board's evolution from its nineteenth-century mandate to deliver clean water and efficient sewerage to a rapidly industrialising metropolis, through to its transformation into a sprawling environmental and planning authority by the close of the twentieth century. Written with scholarly rigour yet accessible prose, this centenary history argues that the Board of Works was far more than a municipal utility — it was a powerful agent of social and environmental change whose decisions fundamentally altered the landscape and lives of Melburnians. Dingle and Rasmussen draw on extensive archival research to illuminate the political battles, engineering triumphs, and public health crises that punctuated the Board's century of operation, illustrating how infrastructure is never merely technical but always deeply political. For anyone with an interest in Australian urban history, civic governance, or the hidden mechanics of modern city life, Vital Connections raises a compelling question: who truly builds a city?