The Chimney of the World

This title explains how and why air quality became an important and keenly contested issue in the world's first industrial city. The book opens by looking at the devastating human and environmental costs of Manchester's steam-driven economic miracle, including acid rain, loss of biological diversity, and the adverse health impacts of air pollution. Part 1 also discusses how the rhythms of the urban smoke cycle helped to shape the city's built environment and came to affect almost every aspect of people's day-to-day lives. The analysis then turns to the interpretation of competing environmental discourses, focusing on how highly diverse narratives about smoke were used by contemporaries to rationalise, naturalise or criticise the dramatic changes wrought by air pollution in 19th-century Manchester. The heavily polluted cityscape was hotly disputed terrain, and Mosley offers an extended critique of opposing viewpoints in the debate. He breaks new ground by seeking to understand working-class ideas about air pollution, as well as those of businessmen and middle-class reformers. The third part of the book explores not only decision-making about smoke prevention technologies, but also the development of public policy and interest group responses to air pollution. Mosley considers the technological, political and economic dimensions of pollution control in all their complexity. "The Chimney of the World" concludes by reflecting on the compelling continuities (and striking disjunctures) between past and present attitudes towards air pollution. This broad-ranging work seeks to add a new dimension to the study of urban environmental history: a local perspective that is highly relevant for a better understanding of today's global pollution dilemmas.

ISBN 1874267499   Pages 288 ISBN13 9781874267492 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher White Horse Press   Weight (grammes) 585 Imprint White Horse Press   Published in Knapwell Format Hardback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 01 Sep 2001   Width (mm) 154 Library of Congress 2004351051   Spine width (mm) 27 DEWEY 363.73870942733   Academic level Professional / Scholarly, General DEWEY edition DC21

		List of abbreviations
		List of illustrations, figures, and tables
		Acknowledgements
		Map 1. The Cotton Towns of North-West England
		Map 2. Manchester in 1838
		Introduction: Manchester, Air Pollution, and Urban Environmental History		1
Pt. 1		The Nature of Smoke		13
		Coal, steam and people		14
		Sensing smoke		19
		The influence of climate and topography		25
		Blackening the face of nature		35
		Smoke and architecture		45
		The urban smoke cycle		50
		Living with smoke		54
		Smoke and health		58
		Accommodating smoke		67
Pt. 2		Stories About Smoke		69
		Wealth and well-being		70
		Waste and inefficiency		89
		Choosing to live with smoke		113
Pt. 3		The Search for Solutions		117
		Setting the agenda for change		118
		The search for solutions continues		145
		Epilogue: Too Little, Too Late?		181
		Notes		191
		Bibliography		239
		Index		265

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