🌊 Ripple · counterfactual
What if the sanitation revolution had gone differently?
1858 · britain
Cities finally separate their sewage from their drinking water and pipe both.
If it had gone differently: Cities keep drinking their own waste; the urban death rate never falls and the great cities stay capped in size.
What it set up
- 1740Europe's population boom, Without a surplus of hands and mouths, there is no cheap urban workforce waiting for the factories.
- 1870The first globalisation, The world economy stays a patchwork of regions; no belle-époque boom, and no 1914 shock when it unwinds.
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