By 1890 New York was running out of space. There were at least a 150,000 horses living in New York. Horses transported goods, services, and people throughout the streets, and while so occupied, each put out twenty-two pounds of horse manure each day. This amounts to 90,000 pounds each month.
The problems caused by such a copious and never-ending amount of horse shit are easy to imagine. George Waring, Jr., the City's Street Cleaning Commissioner, described the city as stinking "with emanations of putrefying organic matter." City streets, according to Elizabeth Kolbert, were"literally
carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven."
Brownstone apartment first floors were up one level to give relief from
the smells. Where lesser amounts of manure had been happily purchased by
surrounding farmers - the over abundant supply had produced such a glut, that
New York could not give the manure away.
The
problem was so bad that one expert predicted that horse manure would reach the
level of Manhattan's third story windows by 1930. The first
International Urban Planning Conference held in 1898 collapsed three days into the ten day schedule when it could not agree on any solutions to the problem.
Then the automobile came along and the problem disappeared.
But the automobile created different problems. Traffic Jams. Smog. Dependence upon oil & Gas. Parking. Car Accidents. On the whole most people prefer traffic jams and exhaust to being buried in manure.
The core truth is that when you solve an old problem with a solution - you inevitably create new problems. Some of the problems maybe anticipated - and others may not be apparent until later. Regardless, you evaluate solutions based upon whether the new problems are preferable to the old problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment