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English to Swedish: Views on climate and mortality in late eighteenth century Stockholm Detailed field: History
Source text - English Views on climate and mortality in late eighteenth century Stockholm
Ph.D. Mattias Legnér, Tema Q (Culture Studies), Linköping University
In this essay I will deal with the demographical crisis of Stockholm in the later part of the eighteenth century. This was a time when Swedish physicians and scientists discussed whether Stockholm was a worse environment than other European cities. The immediate background was alarming mortality rates collected by the authorities since mid-century. Physicians urged the state to act in order to lower these rates, but they were unsure on how to grapple the problem.
My hypothesis is that bad air was perceived as a growing and more alarming environmental problem from about 1780 on, having been preceded by discussions on the differences in climate and manners between town and countryside around 1760, but also by an increasing awareness of a rising demographical crisis in Stockholm. I mean that this discourse on air quality can be seen as a way of understanding and discussing social problems and social hierarchy in the city.
The concept of climate in the eighteenth century
Interest in climate and environment was abundant marked in Sweden (and in other European countries, for that matter) in the eighteenth centuriy. As a matter of fact, eighteenth-century Sweden was internationally reknown at academies and courts for its northern climate. Expeditions were undertaken by famous scientists in order to study climate at the Polar circle. The most famous one was the Frenchman Maupertuis’ astronomical expedition to Torneå in Lapland in the late 1730s, with the aim to decide whether the Earth was perfectly round or flattened at its poles. And when Carl Linnaeus travelled to Leiden after his journey to Lapland, he exploited Europeans myths and prejudice about the North in order to enhance his scientific reputation.
From a French or British view point Swedes were perceived as primitive, farming peoples who had to survive in a cold and non-fertile environment. Earlier, in the 17th century, Scandinavians had been viewed as warriors, stemming from the Gothic peoples. The Laps, on the other hand, were described as the noble savages of Europe, to be compared with North American indians.
Even though the term “environment” was not used by 18th century thinkers and authors, there where other terms which carried a similar meaning. Climate was such a word, extensively used by Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu in his widely disseminated work De l’esprit des lois (The spirit of the laws, 1748). In this seminal piece, Montesquieu stated the importance of climate on the spirit of nations. According to his theory, the sense impressions of the Scandinavians were hemmed by a cold climate, while the senses of southern peoples, i.e. Africans and Arabs, often were overstimulated, causing a nervous behaviour.
Such ideas of climate affecting culture were widely accepted not only in France but also in eighteenth-century Sweden. Climate, understood as geographical and environmental circumstances affecting human society, could explain much of human behaviour and colonial supremacy over non-European peoples. Of course, climate could then also contribute to national identity and the self image of a people.
Medicine and the town
All over western and central Europe, so called “medical topography” arose as a field of interest among physicians and scientists. In medical topography, a place (such as a city) was described and interpreted from the perspective of its climate, especially its air and water quality. Although medical topography never was practiced in any systematic manner in Sweden, influences were received from other parts of Europe, mainly Prussia where enlightened absolutism and concern for the wellbeing of the labouring people gave way for organized health policy. In France and especially Paris, a similar discourse on local climates and health evolved in the later part of the century.
According to physicians of the time, disease was spread primarily through bad air. This is known as “miasma theory” (miasma meaning bad, poisonous air), but in reality it was hardly a theory but a tradition of ideas on the relation between the human body and its environment, going back to ancient Greek thinking which was still in the eighteenth century the canon of medical knowledge. The Greek physician Hippocrates presumably wrote a number of texts collected in his Corpus Hippocraticum in the fourth century BC. In one of the texts, “Airs, Waters, Places”, he describes how the environment affects the wellbeing of humans, but also how there is a correlation between climate and human behiaviour.
Miasma was created spontaneously through athmospheric disturbances or processes taking place in the earth, for example an earthquake or the vicinity of a lake or a marsh. This may sound irrational, but it could actually give an explanation to why there could be an outbreak of an epidemic in one place, while an adjacent place went completely unharmed. In a time when people had no idea of viruses or bacteria, miasma could offer a better explanation of how diseases appeared and were spread than the idea of contagion, which has been identified as the competing explanation. Physicians of the eighteenth century saw no reason to definitely point out either the environment or the individual body as a determining factor at outbreaks.
Changes in weather has (according to Hippocrates) a profound effect on humans, with sudden changes of wind and temperature causing miasma and preventing good health. And when studying the location of a city, you are well advised to look at the most common wind directions. The goal was to choose the best location possible when planning a city, in order to minimize bad consequences for future inhabitants.
So when states began to show more interest in the health of their populations – which was the case in early modern Europe – it was logical to look at climate and air quality as important causes of disease. Let us look at what the Swedish professor in medicine Johan Leche said (1761) about the responsibilities of state and science. It was the task of the medical science to see to that the human body was not harmed by poisonous air. With this knowledge, it was then the responsibility of the state to see that these poisons did not appear where people lived. It is “the duty of policy (politie) to see to that no errors are made in the building of houses, streets and water pipes, which can reinforce changes in air quality, thereby damaging the inhabitants’ health or economy”. Leche’s state was one of intervention, regulation and reforms which had first developed in the preceding century.
If science could show that dangerous environments could be built away, then it was the duty of the state and politie to eliminate these dangers. However, Johan Leche showed not much interest in miasmas caused by human activity such as excrements and refuse. Instead he focused on the location and the climate of the town. A similar stand was taken by the town physician Anders M. Wåhlin in 1760, when he wrote about endemic diseases emanating from the local climate of Jönköping. Even though Wåhlin mentioned latrines causing bad smells, he blamed the “low, marshy and for all bad weathers exposed location” and the unhealthy diet of the population as the main causes of endemics.
Together with mines and ships, large towns were regarded as the most hazardous environments. All three had crowded spaces and a deficit of clean air common. In towns, building of houses and streets had to be regulated in order to ensure that the air did not become poisoned. Especially risky were pools of water which either could produce fogs and mists or if they were contaminated with filth.
A clash between Nature and Culture
The view of towns as potential environment hazards gained ground when Enlightenment criticism of civilization became more popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. This movement has been called primitivism and its most famous representative was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought and wrote about the relationship between man and nature. In primitivist critique, the peasant’s way of life was idealized for being more natural and less complicated than the town dweller’s. The peasant lived in harmony with nature, while the town dweller struggled against it by adopting strange and unnatural habits, such as staying awake late at night and eating spicy food.
One of the most famous physicians in Sweden of that time, David von Schulzenheim, stated in 1763 that “peasants’ work outdoors in clean air, combined with considerable moderation, made their lives longer than town dwellers’”. This was definitely an idyllic view of a peasant’s life in eighteenth century Sweden! Another prominent physician meant that gentlemen in the towns were a bad example for their servants when they partied all night and overslept in the morning, leaving the servants idle. In medical discourse, bodily illness was seen as a symptom of bad morals. In that way, the sick was blamed for his own illness – if he had behaved morally correct, he should not have become ill. We can see how both the individual and the environment could be seen as contributing to bad health. “Virtue”, “moderation” and other Christian keywords were frequent in this discourse on how to stay in good shape.
But there was one remarkable difference between the importance of the individual and the environment. While the state had no right to intervene in the gentleman’s privacy, the environment could be altered and manipulated through regulations and laws. In that way, private housing was not subject to any regulation, but only streets, official buildings (like prohibiting the burial of corpses within the town limits, which was still common in a city like Stockholm) and to some extent commercial enterprises, like moving slaughter houses and some industries from central locations to the outskirts of towns.
Among primitivists and other critics of civilization, Culture was seen as opposed to and inferior to Nature. In the early 1760s, Stockholm physician Peter Jonas Bergius called habit the “second nature” of man. This second nature was a bad substitute for the first and original Nature, which man should find his way back to. In order to do this, man had to abandon all artificial needs, like alcohol, staying up at night and gormandizing. According to Bergius, these bad habits were most common in towns. The urban environment, therefore, tempted man to adopt habits which were in conflict with his true nature, thus causing his body harm.
Stockholm and the mortality rates 1750–1800
Having introduced the eighteenth-century concept of climate, I now move on to the subject of this particular paper. It might be fruitful to start with a brief explanation of the urban environment of Stockholm around the year 1750. The city was one of the smallest capitols in Europe, with a population of about 65.000 in 1750 and 75.000 in 1800. We know this because of the demographic statistics used in Sweden from the mid-eighteenth century, a sign of the newborn interest of the state in having a large and healthy labour force.
The city, and the whole country, was recuperating from the heavy losses of life experienced in the Great Nordic War (1700–1718). Also, early in the century Stockholm had been ravaged both by fire and the plague. Stockholm in the century of 1750–1850 has been called “a stagnating metropolis”, meaning that the city was undergoing a long term demographical crisis. It is known today that Stockholm seems to have had the highest mortality rates among European capitols.
How were these figures of stagnation perceived by contemporary observers? Well, in general they were sceptical and discussed possible errors in the records. The secreterary of the Academy of Sciences published an exhaustive essay on the subject in the mid-1750s, explaining (in hypothetical terms) how the records underestimated the population and that they instead exaggerated the number of deaths. This was a subject that rendered some interest among scientists in the 1760s and 1770s. The last piece published in the Academy’s quarterly acts is dated 1800.
Wargentin returned to the mortality figures in 1766, commenting on the fact that women, being “the weaker sex”, paradoxically lived longer than men in the city. Earlier observers had thought that women stayed healthier because they had easier work and drank less alcohol, i.e. their manners made them more suitable for survival in the city, but Wargentin was sceptical of that explanation since he meant that men and women showed differences in survival already in their early childhood.
Authors explained the mortality with the bad morals and manners of cities, but also that cities in general were encumbered with more deaths than births. Still when scientist Edward Fredric Runeberg wrote in 1775 he did not discuss poor sanitary conditions, but criticized instead the lewd manners of most of the inhabitants.
Sanitary problems in the eighteenth-century town
Objectivally speaking, bad morals was of course not the only health problem in towns. Rather, this criticism of a deificit in virtues should be seen more as a sign of how the bourgeouisie class – which physicians and scientists belonged to – thought about society and environment. More serious were probably the sanitary conditions of the overcrowded and often poorly planned towns of the eighteenth century. Interestingly, sanitary conditions do not seem to have been regarded as a medical problem before mid-century. Instead anthropogenic environmental problems were primarily questions of economy, not health. Litter and excrements should be collected from the streets and taken out into the fields for manure, as several authors on economic issues declared around 1740.
The first professor in economy in Sweden, Anders Berch, dealt with this problem already in 1747. He described in detail what a well planned town should look like. Streets should be kept clean but primarily for economic reasons and not hygienic ones. Human refuse should be used as manure in the fields outside of the city and not to rotten in the streets. Of course, reality was something completely else. Several attempts to improve sanitary conditions in the public environments of Stockholm were made by the authorities in the second half of the century, but they seem to have failed more or less.
Regulations of the environment on health grounds did, however, strike Berch as important from some aspects. The air of the streets should not be contaminated: dead animals were to be removed quickly, ponds of stagnant water should be drained before they began to smell, and graves should be dug deeper so that no rotting smell could be sensed. To sum up, then, poor sanitary conditions before 1780 were not seen as a threat to the environment but as a sign of waste of natural resources. After 1780, as we shall see, emerging hygiene ideals among the urban bourgeouise would instead focus on bad smells coming from refuse and poor people’s quarters.
The discourse on urban air after 1780
We have seen that air in the countryside was considered healthy, but in towns it could instead be harmful. In towns people lived closer to each other than in the country, and they had a lesser quantity of air to breath. Remember that oxygen was discovered not until late in the eighteenth century (1777), so scientists where confused on how to best explain how air was consumed by humans. None the less, they realized that air turned bad when it was exhaled. Well into the following century, many physicians described a matter called phlogiston appearing when air was consumed by living organisms.
Air could also turn bad by way of putrefaction. Daniel Wickman, who worked as a physician for poor people in the Stockholm district Södermalm, wrote in 1785 that the Fatabur lake had become a place for disposal of litter, excrements and dead animals, destroying the air in the environs and making people living in the area sick: “Several sewers and gutters lead to this little lake, which especially in the summer time enhances the smell of the stagnant water when it is set in motion.” He then reported on several diseases and deaths in a block adjacent to the water, and explained how he had begun to advice poor people to avoid the area in Spring and Autumn.
The effect of the Fatabur lake and other ponds on local climate was also discussed by physician and member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences Johan Lorens Odhelius in a treatise from the same year. He began by saying that Stockholm had a location which gave it superb conditions for a good climate, with winds sweeping in from the sea and cleansing the air of the city. Even though the Old City was a maze of narrow alleys and high buildings, and populated by “an abundance of poor, dirty, lewd people who died more easily”, it was surrounded by open waters and furnished with several good wells.
Smell was thus seen as a source of disease, regardless of its origins. In that way, smells from public toilets, heaps of garbage, marshes, grave yards, narrow alleys, slaughter houses and lead making were lumped together as hazardous environments. That explains why physicians were more engaged in fighting bad smells, or the symtoms, rather than the sources of smell. We have already seen that it was common to sprinkle vinegar on boat decks, but vinegar was also used in hospitals at this time. It was however not the only method of refreshing air. At the first maternity hospital in Sweden, Allmänna Barnbördshuset in Stockholm, physician Johan Kraak advised nurses to put fresh fir twigs and jars of vinegar in the ward, but he also ordered to have the floors scrubbed regularly and fresh air to be let in. He also commented on the hygiene of patients when advicing nurses to change their linen often, but he did not say anything about the personal hygiene of the staff.
Kraak and his colleague Trendelenburg saw themselves as pioneers of maternity medicine in the 1780s, fighting old prejudice which said that mothers should be lying in bed and kept warm for at least a week after delivery. They believed that all patients and not just the rich had a right to be treated, but the poor had to settle with lower standards. The idea of social hierarchy was not to be challenged in any institution, not even at a maternity hospital.
Just as air could be destroyed it could also be made breathable again. Physicians of the time identified three ways of improving city air. To begin with they realized that air was improved by gardens and parks. Second, air could be mixed with water such as lakes and seas. Third, great fires could clean the air, if only temporary. Nils Dalberg was of the opinion that Stockholm through its open location between lake Mälaren and the Baltic sea had splendid conditions for a good local climate. But instead these conditions were squandered by houses and hovels clustered together, preventing the winds to travel freely through the streets. Dalberg suggested many changes in building wider and straight streets, lower houses and parks. All graveyards should be banned from the city, and the lakes in the city be filled in. His ideas of a total rebuilding of the inner city was however not to be taken seriously until a century later, then for other reasons than a healthy public environment.
Parks and springs became popular in the late eighteenth century. Outside Stockholm, on the isle of Djurgården, an amusement park with water springs grew up where the bourgeoisie could consume mineral water and take relaxing walks under the chestnut trees. Djurgården was remade into a pastoral idyll where stressed town dwellers could take a moment’s rest from the smells and noises of the city. Of course, this environment was primarily frequented by middle class people who had to stay in Stockholm for most part of the year, such as merchants, artisans and civil servants. Aristocrats generally escaped to their country estates when summer came. This was neither a place visited by the poor people living around the Fatabur lake. In an earlier work I have argued that water was viewed as healthy and strengthening when it was consumed in a private or semi private environment, such as Djurgården, but generally seen as a threat and a source of pollution when encountered in a public environment such as the Fatabur lake. Access to clean drinking water had become a question of social class.
In lack of chemical equipment to analyze the contents of water, its quality was determined chiefly on the basis of its taste. Doctors analyzed wells in and around Stockholm, studying taste and the presence of different minerals. However, they did not – at least not explicitly – draw the conclusion that wells could be sources of disease. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that water was identified as a carrier of disease, after physician John Snow had examined an outbreak of cholera in the vicinity of a London well. During the 18th century water could however produce disease indirectly by giving off foul and poisonous air.
Translation - Swedish
English to Swedish: A Metropolitan History of Climate Detailed field: Environment & Ecology
Source text - English A Metropolitan History of Climate
A comparative study of science and politics in Stockholm and Copenhagen after 1850
By Mattias Legnér and Sven Lilja
General purpose and hypotheses
In this project we intend to concentrate on the scientific exploration of urban climate of Stockholm and Copenhagen, and how the political authorities tried to meet the challenges in climate and air quality. Our purpose is to explore the theories that governed political decisions as well as the scientific practice and political implementations of these theories. We will try to identify models and ideas which were used for identification and explanations of climatic change in these cities, as well as the steps that were taken to secure the efficiency, rationality and growth of the cities, not excluding a healthy environment of their inhabitants. We will also approach the tension between local (internal) and general (external) factors governing science and politics of the studied field in order to find out what margins of freedom that were at the disposal for the scientific and political communities of the cities. Finally it is our attempt to use our main results in a discussion of a future sustainable development in metropolitan areas.
The problem
A study into the climate and air history of Stockholm and Copenhagen should be seen from a double perspective. A natural perspective focuses on the understanding of climate and weather change and the change in the structure of the city air in relation to the city's history, its epochs and its historical break points. A cultural perspective, on the other hand, takes its point of departure in a natural perspective and analyses the different strategies used by the city to meet climate and air changes. Within the cultural perspective we find the history of mentalities and an actor-oriented focus on political and economic decisions and processes. Our concern here will deal with three issues:
• Ideas of air and climate.
• The scientific exploration of urban climate and air.
• The political implementation and public debate of urban climate and air knowledge.
Method and theory
The long time period enables us to cover both the climate change of the 19th century (with the end of the so called Little Ice Age) and the emergence and growth of the industrial society with an accelerating greenhouse effect. The 19th century is a time when Stockholm and Copenhagen are transformed from pre-industrial capitols into post-industrial metropolises. A third methodological motive for the research period is the availability of systematically collected data on the urban climate.
In order to gain the advantages connected to dense population structures, closeness and centrality Stockholm and Copenhagen have had to cope with challenges that follow from their size and social structure. One central aspect of this confrontation between challenges and adaptations concern the relation between intended and unintended urban change. At the centre of this problem we identify the scientific discourse as both a source to as well as a response to political action. The general question is under what conditions in a metropolitan context science becomes a basic foundation for political decisions, and under what conditions other social factors tend to marginalise scientific results. For the purpose of clarification we attempt to approach the problem by testing four different models of interpretation which appear in the interface between challenge, knowledge and action:
1) The scientific community tolls the alarm bell and the political community reacts smooth and fast without questioning the predictions of science.
2) The political community confronts a major threat and turns to the scientific community for guidance.
3) The scientific community tolls the alarm bell but the political community answers with scepticism. The political decisions tend to ignore the warning and give priority to other factors.
4) The relation between the scientific and political communities is characterised by a wait-and-see policy, with the scientists trying to predict political reactions before tolling the alarm bell, and the politicians trying to evaluate the scientific warnings within a wider context of causes and consequences.
We believe that the last model characterises the normal relation between the two communities. In more alarming situations the three previously mentioned models might be alternatives, but the outcome will depend on the scale and depth of other social interests involved.
A history of three phases
We have tentatively identified three main phases of development in the metropolitan history of climate. The first period between 1750 and 1850 might be called a ‘pre-scientific and pre-metropolitan’ phase. The second period stretches from c. 1850 to 1950 and could be called the ‘proto-scientific and early metropolitan phase’. The third period from approximately 1950 until today we label the ‘scientific and metropolitan phase’.
In the long tradition form Hippocrates to Montesquieu climate determinism dominated the anthropological interpretations of human variations. Climate was seen as a vital factor behind the characters of individuals and nations. Crowded and congested spaces were considered lethal dangers. Enlightened physicians gave opinions of how the urban air could be improved, but very little was done. The new scientific curiosity during the enlightenment epoch inspired scholars to study weather and climate.
From 1850 to 1950 the towns were industrialised. More people were concentrated in narrow spaces and the cities were exposed to heavier air and water pollution. A growing quantity of data and the development of modern climate theories stimulated the scientific studies of the urban climate and the urban air. Climate became a political question. In some cities an embryonic environmental critique started to take shape already at the turn of the century. The authorities of Stockholm started to raise the question about the city air already in the early 20th century. At the end of the period the concept of public health was popularized. Cars were introduced but urban air was more polluted by horse-droppings than by exhaust fumes. During this period there was also a deodorization of urban air with the rise of private and public hygiene.
In the time after 1950 the modern environmental debate has emerged. The quality of air is no longer only a matter of well-being and health, but is together with water seen as a sign of the condition of the world. Science is being used as a tool to find the causes behind the changes of air and climate in various environments, for instance the discovery of global warning. Motorism and smog becomes lethal dangers to the urban environment. Allergic reactions also become a public health problem, and harmful working and housing environments are for the first time exposed to harmful particles like radiation, asbestos, dust and mould.
From the 1960s the political culture focuses more on the environmental questions. The climate and urban air plays an important part from the beginning. The environmental discourse becomes global and popular. In the post-modern city the industrial society has become a problem. People start to look for new roads to the sustainable cities of the future, and on these roads a radical 'scientification' of the climate and air problems takes place. Today we use refined instruments to measure a number of variables related to the urban air. Post-modern environmental science has been exalted to the status of pseudo-religion.
We thus assume that history will show a development from a Kuhnian pre-paradigm scientific situation with urban air and climate interpreted from Hippocratic or theological perspectives, into a modern scientific paradigmatic situation with scientific theories and models as dominant tools of analyses. Urban growth and development are supposed to trigger changes in scientific knowledge and political practices. However, we also intend to explore the idea that environmental problems are cultural constructions, emerging and developing partly independent of urban growth.
References
• Fagan, B (2000), The Little Ice Age. How Climate Made History 1300-1850.
• Frängsmyr, C (2000), Klimat och karaktär. Naturen och människan i svenskt 1700-tal.
• Hughes, J D (2005/2001), Världens miljöhistoria.
• Kuhn, T S, De vetenskapliga revolutionernas struktur.
• Lamb, H H (1995/1992), Climate, history and the modern world.
• Legnér, M (2005), "Stanken från Stockholm. Föreställningar om stadsmiljö och hälsa under 1700-talet." (Sakta vi gå genom stan. Red. Berglund, M.)
• Legnér, M (2006), ”Klimatets intåg under 1900-talet”, Svenska dagbladet den 8 januari 2006.
• Lilja, S (2004), “Den lilla istiden och sextonhundratalskölden” (Ymer. Red. Wibjörn Karlén)
• Lilja, S (2005),'Klimatet, staden och industrisamhället – en essä om historia och klimat' (I all anspråkslöshet... Red. Stadin, K.)
• Lilja, S (2005), "Stockholms klimathistoria. Några reflexioner och perspektiv." (Sakta vi gå genom stan. Red. Berglund, M.)
• McNeill, J.R. (2003/2000), Någonting är nytt under solen. Nittonhundratalets miljöhistoria.
• Moberg, A (1992), Lufttemperaturer i Stockholm 1756-1990. Historik, inhomogeniteter och urbaniseringseffekt.
• Moberg, A. (1996), Temperature Variations in Sweden since the 18th Century.
• Sörlin, S, red. (1997), 'The Road Towards Sustainability. A Historical perspective.' (The Baltic University. A Sustainable Baltic Region.)
• Sörlin, S, Öckerman, A (1998/2002), Jorden en ö.
• Weart, S R (2004), The Discovery of Global Warming.
Translation - Swedish
English to Swedish: The ecological challenge: Stockholm and Copenhagen after 1945 Detailed field: History
Source text - English The ecological challenge: Stockholm and Copenhagen after 1945
(Mattias Legnér and Sven Lilja)
Object
In this project we intend to concentrate on how the political authorities of Stockholm and Copenhagen respectively perceived and tried to meet the ecological challenges of the industrial and postindustrial ages. Special attention will be given to questions of climate changes and air quality, and the interplay between politics and science. As capitals, these cities are also deeply affected by national politics regarding climate and environment. The time period will be from mid-20th century when ecological challenges became of great concern for the local authorities. We will try to identify models and ideas which were used for identification and explanations of climatic change in these cities, as well as the steps that were taken to secure the efficiency, rationality and growth of the cities, not excluding a healthy environment of their inhabitants. We will also approach the tension between local (internal) and general (external) factors governing politics of the studied field in order to find out what margins of freedom that was at the disposal for the local authorities. Finally it is our intention to use our results in a discussion of a future sustainable development in metropolitan areas.
Research strategies
As metropolises Stockholm and Copenhagen has generated some typical environmental problems connected to modern large city development. An artificial physical structure has been built up to meet the social demands and challenges from urban growth. The cities and its authorities have to adapt to environmental threats as well as political changes. Although political decisions mainly were taken with planned developments in mind, many unexpected events and processes forced the cities to ad hoc reactions in order to grasp control and counteract chaotic developments.
The sub-study will therefore be disposed according to these three issues:
1) The scientific exploration of urban climate and air.
2) The political implementation and public debate of urban climate and air knowledge.
3) A comparison of how the local authorities of Stockholm and Copenhagen respectively have perceived and handled ecological challenges in relation to the policies of their respective national governments.
In order to gain the advantages connected to dense population structures, closeness and centrality Stockholm and Copenhagen have had to cope with challenges that follow from their size and social structure. One central aspect of this confrontation between challenges and adaptations concern the relation between intended and unintended urban change. At the centre of this problem we identify the scientific discourse as both a source to as well as a response to political action. The general question is under what conditions in a metropolitan context science becomes a basic foundation for political decisions, and under what conditions other social factors tend to marginalise scientific results (Jamison 2003). We will approach the problem by testing four different models of interpretation which appear in the interface between challenge, knowledge and action:
1) The scientific community tolls the alarm bell and the political community reacts smooth and fast without questioning the predictions of science.
2) The political community confronts a major threat and turns to the scientific community for guidance.
3) The scientific community tolls the alarm bell but the political community answers with scepticism. The political decisions tend to ignore the warning and give priority to other factors.
4) The relation between the scientific and political communities is characterised by a wait-and-see policy, with the scientists trying to predict political reactions before tolling the alarm bell, and the politicians trying to evaluate the scientific warnings within a wider context of causes and consequences.
We believe that the last model characterises the normal relation between the two communities. In more alarming situations the three previously mentioned models might be alternatives, but the outcome will depend on the scale and depth of other social interests involved.
Sources, methods
The sub-project is planned as a systematic comparative study of two Nordic capitols. In some instances it might be motivated to incorporate the other two capitols as well. Since the period of study is rather long and the focussed problems complex in nature it will be necessary to concentrate on particular source groups and data series. Focus will be on the one hand on what appear as time specific and typical and on the other hand on break points and important changes of historical directions. This means that our investigations will concentrate on shorter periods and events of significance, while the broader event flow and processes has to be covered more lightly.
Part of the project will be to find and evaluate useful sources of information. However, already at this point it seems clear that scientific and medical reports in various publications, and traditional political sources (magistrates protocols, official reports etc.) will be of major importance. Sources concerning the cities support of scientific studies have to be identified and analysed. The media debate has to be covered. However, considering the quantity of this type of source, the media discourse has to be approached by strategic case studies concerning major discussions where both the political and scientific communities are involved. Such cases may be the United Nations conferences on global environment in Stockholm 1972 and 1982, the introduction of the Greens in Stockholm and Copenhagen politics in the 1980s, and debates on growing motorism and transportation problems in the 1990s.
Previous research
With the use of fossil fuel energy sources truly urbanised societies emerged in Europe. Perhaps three billion people in the world live in cities today, and therefore it is justified to say that large cities represent the majority of human air pollution and influence on global climate. With the rise of the city, motorism has become a major environmental problem in the world today (McNeill 2003; Ponting 1991:305). At the same time we have seen a growing awareness of the human influence on regional and global climate. (McCormick 1995;Weart 2004)