In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world’s first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
[...]
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.
And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth-century city -- for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.
All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.
Source: Eric Morris: “From horse power to horsepower”
Hmmm.... sounds similar to the current climate change prognostications. (we should be so lucky that some wonder-technology swoops in to save the planet)
Yet I found the urban planning conference date interesting, so I looked it up.
Karl Benz built and tested the world's first car in 1886 (powered by an internal combustion engine)
That's a full decade before our experts gave up on the problem!
How many other "solutions" (and yes, note the irony with climate change) are sitting in front of our noses?
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