American Cities and Technology is designed to be used on its own, or as a companion volume to the accompanying American Cities and Technology Reader . Chronologically, this volume ranges from 1790, when the first US census reported 5 per cent of the population living in urban areas, to 1990, when 75 per cent of the American population lived in urban areas. Geographically, its focus is the continental USA. However, the context for the study of modern electronic communications in relation to cities transcends national boundaries just as the technologies themselves do; consequently the contents of the last two chapters in the volume range more widely around the globe. Among the issues discussed are the rise of the skyscraper, the coming of the automobile age, relations between private and public transport, the development of infrastructural technologies and systems, the implications of electronic communications and the emergence of city planning.