What Happens to the Built Environment Without People?

This Scientific American interview is with Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us. The book has a very simple premise: What would happen to the built environment, and how quickly, if people just went somewhere else. It sounds like a fascinating read for anyone who plans, designs, builds, and maintains parts of our built environment.

I had a fascinating time talking to engineers and maintenance people in New York City about what it takes to hold off nature. I discovered that our huge, imposing, overwhelming infrastructures that seem so monumental and indestructible are actually these fairly fragile concepts that continue to function and exist thanks to a few human beings on whom all of us really depend.