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from Part Three - Cities of Hydrocarbon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2022
Chapter 10 of Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet explores cities’ role as creators and creations of the early hydrocarbon industrial revolution. It considers a series of “plot twists” in which coal, long used as a fuel for home heating in Chinese cities, became the dominant means to heat homes in London, with accelerating consequences for the city’s Ocean-fueled economy. As population and wages there outpaced other cities even as fuel costs decreased, incentives grew for capitalists to invest in coal-fired machines over labor. This created general conditions that favored a long string of technological trials and errors that resulted in improved metallurgy in craft shops such as those in Birmingham and the first coal-fired textile factories in places like Manchester.
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