ABSTRACT
Urban populations consume vast quantities of land, water and other resources, and create huge amounts of human, domestic and industrial waste. ‘Urban metabolism’ is the phrase that Joel Tarr has used to describe the processing of such inputs and outputs through urban systems: ‘the supply of water and the disposal of wastewater or sewage; the generation and disposal of industrial wastes; and the collection and disposal of solid wastes and garbage from food and consumer products’ (1996, p.xxxi). The production of waste long preceded the development of methods for its systematic disposal, for waste was not initially perceived as a problem (Melosi, 1980a, p. 18). However, as industrialization and ever more rapid urbanization occurred during the nineteenth century, waste and refuse came to be understood as problems of urban life. Initially, it was a matter of the ‘metabolism’ of individual cities, regardless of effects elsewhere. Indeed, it is difficult to generalize about water supply, waste and pollution in the USA because their handling was so locationally, politically and temporally specific. In many cases, European methods were adopted, though adapted to the local context of application. One city's solution to the problem of its waste often became a pollution problem for the next city downstream or downwind, a situation persisting well into the twentieth century until some aspects of controlling the infrastructure became federal matters. The story of water supply, waste and pollution is both highly local and ‘environmental’ in the broadest sense.
