Gallery Editors' Note

摘要

Marching construction tools, invading tenement buildings, projectile bricks, and the smog of war are the ingredients of Michael Rawson's fascinating Gallery essay in this issue of Environmental History. Rawson undertakes a wonderfully detailed reading of an equally detailed nineteenth-century etching by English illustrator George Cruikshank. Titled "London Going out of Town, or the March of Bricks and Mortar," the 1829 sketch depicts a literal battle between the city on the Thames and its rural hinterland as a metaphor for urban sprawl. While Rawson illustrates the various ways the image reflects nineteenth-century anxieties regarding the inexorable growth of London, he also convincingly argues that the colorful image is relevant today because it raises timeless concerns about the environmental side effects of urban growth and humankind's continuing inability to control it.