Re: The Department of Urban Affairs
Reply #87 –
Would you believe that cars came into being as a way to respond to the pollution that horses caused?
Consider the problem of thousands of horses in a fairly close urban area. Horses aren't exactly discreet in where they do their business, so most city streets were something of a minefield. Worse--- for the longest time streets weren't even paved, so you had all of that mess in the mud of the streets. Fun.
By the time the automobile came on the scene, almost anything had to be better than the quagmire left by several thousand horses in a city like London or New York.
Today you think horses are cleaner than cars. They are--- because they're not so congested. They live on farms with open fields, and the few that do pull buggies do it in Amish communities that tend to be small and agrarian in the way they're set up. A farm with half a dozen horses is quite a different thing from a city with several hundred horses in the same area.