Shock Cities: The Environmental Transformation and Reform of Manchester and Chicago (review)

The Victorian age seems increasingly, even in popular presentations, to be recast as a time of great imagination, rather than one of repression and conservatism. I was long reluctant to abandon my enthusiasm for the environment of early modern England in favor of an interest in the Victorian period. However, despite the expected constraints of pro-industrialism, discrimination, and a well-defined class structure, I am fascinated by the way that a growing professionalism, liberalism, and inventiveness challenged the society in which the Victorians found themselves. Harold Platt's Shock Cities is preoccupied with an examination of the challenges that environmental transformation and reform brought to nineteenth-century Manchester and Chicago. This is an important and thoroughly researched book by a historian with a long interest in the two cities. I know I will return to it many times as I ponder the environmental struggles of the Victorian period.

Platt begins by describing the effects of rapid industrialization following the arrival of steam power in Manchester. He pays special attention to the writings of contemporaries such as Alexis de Tocqueville, James Phillips Kay, Angus Reach, and Friedrich Engels, who understood the contradictions in the creation of wealth and poverty at the same place. The industrial transformation was initially seen as something that was almost anomalous, rather than signaling the environment that was to typify urban areas in the hundred years to follow. After treating Manchester's unprecedented growth, Platt turns to Chicago, "mudhole in the prairie," and the battles over water supply and sewerage, battles involving enormous profits. They show the ambitions of the planners and engineers and the inevitable failings of grand schemes, which benefited the wealthier citizens while the poor often continued to suffer the environmental burdens and an unfair proportion of the costs. Platt explores interesting differences in governance; Chicago's was more variable than Manchester's, which remained in the hands of a narrower ruling elite.

Many topics in Shock Cities continue to concern us today—urban sprawl, environmental justice. While it is not Platt's prime intention to draw parallels with the present, the reader inevitably makes links with the past. The citizens of Chicago and Manchester were aware that the collapse of reservoirs and the devastation caused by floods were not unforeseen accidents of nature. The risks were well-known, remedial measures too expensive or undertaken too slowly. In Manchester the city government was keen to provide drinking water from Thirlmere some distance off, but there were demands that one of the nation's few remaining unspoiled havens be protected.

I must confess that I am not a great enthusiast of comparative studies. Platt argues that such studies are useful, especially where they make cross-national comparisons. However, there are dangers of looking too hard for similarities and differences, and the approach can also make it hard for a reader who must move back and forward between a number of narratives.

There is a lengthy section in the middle of the book on brewing, which has strong connections with the book's underlying themes. Although such connections will not be immediately obvious to all readers, Platt does a good job of relating brewing and urban pollution. In medieval times, brewing wastes contaminated the rivers and in Elizabethan London coal burned by brewers polluted the air, damaged buildings, and offended the monarch. The relationship between brewing and microbiology is also an important theme, and Platt tries to tie the effort to improve beers with the understanding of water pollution.

The importance of microorganisms and germ theory again comes up in the discussion of air pollution. Medical officers grappling with disease and the contamination of water supplies could make a ready connection between microorganisms and the diseases they created. They argue that the inorganic nature of smoke particles and the sulfur dioxide from coal posed few obvious health risks; indeed, sulfur dioxide had antiseptic properties. The ascendance of germ theory may have actually...