[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Sorry, but wood is actually the least polluting way to heat your house, other than solar. It releases no fossil CO2 (ok, maybe a little bit running chainsaws &c), the combustion products are all purely natural, and most ecosystems have evolved to deal with fires.

My postage wasn't clear - more CO2 per unit of heat from wood vs Coal, the latter is more energy dense. Maybe it is better for houses but not for power stations ?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Earned more, yes, but also spent more because many necessities of life (starting with food) had to be purchased, through a food chain that added costs of transportation & storage, plus profits for any number of middlemen. I'd really have to see some irrefutable evidence of longer (and healthier) urban lives.

I don't have this stat to hand (loaned the book (with sources in it) over Christmas to someone) however I recall from memory that the "Survey of the British Population" (Gregory King, circa 1688) recorded an annual income for a labourer of between £2 and £4 a year for a labourer and farm worker. It (the wage for an unskilled labourer) rose after 1800 so that it was 50% higher by 1850 despite the population growing by 3 times.

The attractiveness of the city vs rural life can be seen all over the world - 19th century Britain, 19th and 20th century USA, 20th Century Japan and even 1980s on China.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Certainly it's not at all hard to find evidence of excess urban deaths. Here's a good one from air pollution: Clearing The Air Bradford wasn't even a major city, like London or "Auld Reekie". Then there were things like cholera epidemics caused by contaminated water, deficiency diseases like rickets...

Actually Bradford was a major city in the industrial revolution in the UK - most cities were, including the one I am originally from - Preston on the other side of the Pennines. My dad came from Leigh and can recall counting over 90 chimneys from mills and factories in the town from a hill near his home when he was a child (early 1950s).

There are 2 now I think, both preserved as historical monuments.

Our cities and towns had, like most up until this period, grown chaotically and organically. We didn't have the "grid" organisation that governments in Europe and the US liked (so they could march troops quickly in to deal with "trouble") - streets grew with the ground layout and topology.

For example in each town there is a "gate" linked with the activity close by - in Preston a "Friargate" linked to the local church, "Fishergate" for catches landed at the local port and so on. Even "Auld Reekie" has such "gates".

We cleaned the air here only after WW2 by banning coal burning for house heating in cities - the "Clean Air Act". The poor infrstructure of the rest of our cities - drains, water etc. is something we live with today. We have good water supplies, good drains and reasonable flood defences - even with the recent events here.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

It should also be noted that a substantial share of the migration from country to city was anything but voluntary. From the Highland Clearances & Enclosure Acts down to China's Three Gorges Dam (which forced the displacement of over a million people),

Agreed in part - the migration is partly forced due to enclosure etc. but also voluntary - I would not like to work out the proportions, I suspect they will vary from scenario to scenario.

However this suggests otherwise :

The economist Pietra Rivoli writes, 'As generations of mill girls and seamstresses from Europe, America and Asia are bound together by this common sweatshop experience — controlled, exploited, overworked, and underpaid — they are bound together too by one absolute certainty, shared across both oceans and centuries: this beats the hell out of life on the farm.'

Originally Posted by jamesqf

governments have long pursued policies of forcing people into cities, where they can be more easily controlled.

Not agreed - that is bordering on a conspiracy theory. Google "Peterloo" for a worked example.