The Laissez-Faire Experiment Quotes

“A fascinating recent study by Stephan Hebloch, Yanos Zylberberg, and Alex Trew tracks how coal use changed neighbourhoods and generated income segregation. It begins by noting that throughout England, as well as in other industrial areas in the northern hemisphere, the east side of of cities are often poorer than the west. The contrast between the posh western neighbourhoods of London, such as Kensington, Chelsea, and Notting Hill, and the city's East End is well known. It turns out that similar east-west patterns appear across many cities. The reason for this is that, in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, the typical wind direction is from west to east (at lower latitudes, the trade winds blow the opposite direction). [...]
Even today, when air pollution is only a fraction of what it was in the 1880s and the vast majority of factories have long since been shuttered, patterns of pollution in the nineteenth century can still explain one fifth of the variation in poverty across neighbourhoods within British cities.”
― W. Walker Hanlon, The Laissez-Faire Experiment: Why Britain Embraced and Then Abandoned Small Government, 1800–1914

“In London, efforts to improve drainage received a new impetus in 1858 by what came to be called the Great Stink of London. The long hot summer of that year lowered the flow of the Thames, while every day tons of raw sewage continued to flow into the river. As the sewage stewed, foul smells engulfed the neighbourhoods along the banks, including the Houses of Parliament, which was 'all but compelled to legislate upon the great London nuisance by the force of sheer stench.' (The Times, 18 June 1858). The result was the Metropolis Local Management Amendment Act of 1858, which became law just 18 days after it was introduced: clear proof of how efficient Parliament could be when properly motivated.”
― W. Walker Hanlon, The Laissez-Faire Experiment: Why Britain Embraced and Then Abandoned Small Government, 1800–1914