Preface:

Once called the “Workshop of the World,” greater Philadelphia played indispensable roles in American manufacturing and making the United States a major industrial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, a byproduct of that industry was pollution, the effects of which are still visible in the twenty-first century. In our sessions, teachers learned about greater Philadelphia’s environmental history, its rise and fall as a major manufacturing center, the relationship between the built and natural worlds, and how the regions’ cities and towns addressed and regulated various forms of pollution. Specific topics included the development of parklands, early forms of urban sanitation, disease epidemics and public health, urban renewal and suburban growth, brownfield remediation, and how modern environmentalism became a political and social issue. We explored this history using a variety of source material, including popular music, art, cartography, cinema, literature, and historical documents.