to flush their excrement directly into the river. The summer of 1854 saw the “Great Stink” engulf London. The hot weather helped expose the pollution of the water of the Thames, and waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid swept through the population. The smell was so overpowering that The Times newspaper said that MPs had been “forced by sheer stench” to rush a bill through Parliament in just 18 days in the effort to provide money to construct a new sewer system for London.24
The engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, was commissioned to design a network of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and street sewers to intercept the raw sewage that ran freely along them. At a time when London’s population totalled 1 million people, Bazalgette made the ingenious decision to build it for 4 million people, “ensuring it will never need to be expanded”. The results were enormous, with the end of the cholera epidemic, improved public health, and innovative transformation of London’s sewer system.
With an ever-expanding population of 8 million, London still faces sewage issues to this day, with sewer overflow emissions happening about fifty times per year. This has resulted in a brand-new super-sewer, the Thames Tideway, being dug under London to intercept sewage that would otherwise pollute the river. Seven metres wide, it will run for 25 km, impressing Bazalgette I’m sure.
London is a lesson in reinvention. Its ability to enact new policy and reform to create a better place, learn from its disasters, and cater to its citizens’ most basic needs with progressive change is a challenge we are still facing today.
Modern London
The Great Smog of 1952 began with a simple veil of fog that was not unusual for grey, cool, misty London. Within a few hours, however, the fog began to turn a yellowish-brown colour as it mixed with the soot produced by London’s factories, chimneys, and diesel-fuelled cars and buses. This combination produced a poisonous smog the likes of which London had never seen before.
A high-pressure weather system had stalled over southern England and caused a temperature inversion that sent a layer of warm air high above the ground, trapping the poisonous cold air at ground level. It prevented London’s sulphurous coal smoke from rising and prevented the wind from dispersing the smog. It was a noxious, reeking, 48 km-wide air mass, which was so dense that Londoners were unable to see their feet as they walked.25
The Great Smog paralyzed London, with all traffic and public transport coming to a halt. Abandoned cars lined the streets, parents were advised to keep their children home from school, looting and burglaries increased, movie theatres closed, and a greasy grime covered all exposed surfaces.
The Great Smog lasted for five days and finally lifted when a wind from the west swept the toxic cloud away from London and out to the North Sea, but the damage was already done and the effects were lingering. Initial reports suggested that approximately 4,000 died prematurely in the aftermath of the smog, but many experts now argue that the Great Smog claimed between 8,000 and 12,000 lives.26 The elderly, young children, heavy smokers, and those with respiratory problems were particularly vulnerable.
Heavy fog was a common occurrence in London, and as a consequence there was no sense of urgency. The British government was slow to act, until the undertakers ran out of coffins and flower shops ran out of bouquets. Following a government investigation into the link between deaths and the Great Smog, parliament passed the Clean Air Act of 1956, which restricted the burning of coal in urban areas and implemented smoke-free zones.27
The transition from coal, as the city’s primary heating source, to oil, electricity, and gas took years, and there were other deadly fogs during this period. Slow action remains to be the greatest problem when it comes to cities enacting clear air quality protection measures, but the Great Smog did teach us about the lingering effects of air pollution and the disastrous human cost.
Ken Livingstone served as the Mayor of London from 2000 to 2007 and implemented a series of innovative measures in the city, including improved public transport and priority bus corridors. His most recognized initiatives, however, were a congestion charging policy and a Low Emission Zone. High-polluting vehicles pay a fee to come into the city, and all drivers (with valid exceptions) pay a specific congestion fee to access the central part of the city, creating space on city streets, redirecting the demand to drive elsewhere in the city to other modes of transport, and reducing carbon emissions. It is a policy that has inspired cities around the world, with New York and Milan adopting similar measures.28 It also serves to illustrate perfectly how cities, which hold 50% of the world’s population, are uniquely positioned, as well as having a unique responsibility, to tackle the climate crisis head on.
The lesson of how London implemented a largely unpopular set of measures is testament to its ability to listen to the plight of its citizens, respect the data, and above all to recognize the greater good for the city and be tenacious in putting it in place.
Given the lessons from 1665 London through to modern London, it can be argued that the Grenfell fire should never have happened. However, I am confident that London will apply the lessons from this tragedy to avoid such an event happening again.
Jerusalem
The holiest place in Judaism is Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the last remnant of the Second Temple, the outer Western Wall, stands. Each year, thousands of people, of all faiths and levels of religious observance, flock to the Western Wall (also referred to as the Wailing Wall) to pray, sight-see, and hopefully learn for themselves the incredible story behind this site.
The Western Wall is the last remnant of the Second Temple, meaning that before the Second Temple there was also a First Temple. The First Temple was built in 1000 BCE by King Solomon in the years after King David conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital, but the city was captured by the Babylonians and the Temple was then destroyed in 586 BCE.29 In 538 BCE, the Jews returned from their exile to Jerusalem, and by 515 BCE they had built the Second Temple. The Second Temple spanned three significant historical periods: the Persian period, the Hellenistic period, and, finally, the Roman period.30 During the Roman period it was eventually destroyed by Titus, along with the city of Jerusalem. Jewish tradition tells us that both temples were destroyed on the Ninth of Av on the Jewish calendar (usually July or August on the Gregorian calendar). Every year the destructions are commemorated by a day of mourning called Tisha B’Av.
Nowadays, the Western Wall is all that remains, and it stands at Temple Mount alongside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock, one of the most famous symbols of Jerusalem. It is also in close proximity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, synagogues, and mosques. The site has become the seat of the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity – and a symbol of a diverse, tolerant, and international city (Figure 2.5).
Figure 2.5 Jerusalem, the only city to exist twice – in heaven and on Earth. (Source: Josef/Adobe Stock)
This architectural palimpsest tells the extraordinary story of Jerusalem through a single structure. The cycle of destruction and reconstruction, of survival and preservation, is inherently hopeful and inspirational to the cities of today. Jerusalem is a resilient city. The city employs strict security, and behavioural measures are taken to protect the integrity of Temple Mount. The site itself has also proved helpful in attracting tourism, with it often being listed on various “Top Ten” things to do in Jerusalem, which by extension has provided economic benefits to the city.
In recent years the Western Wall has also become the place of social action on the subject of women’s equality. For many years, ultra-orthodox men opposed women praying at the Wall, sometimes going as far as violently dispersing dedicated women’s prayer services. The Wall itself is split into two sections. The larger section is dedicated for men, and the second, much smaller, section is dedicated for women’s prayer. An advocacy