The historical impact of coal on cities

Abstract

Historically coal has offered both benefits and costs to urban areas. Benefits include coal’s role in fueling industry and thus employment. The primary costs are air pollution and its impact on human health. This paper starts by using a Rosen–Roback style model to examine how differences in local coal availability affect equilibrium city employment. Drawing on the model, the paper surveys papers that examine the net effects of coal on the growth in city population and air pollution on health. The paper then turns to papers that explicitly consider the trade-offs between production benefits and pollution disamenities across space and over time. The paper ends with a discussion of opportunities for future work on coal and cities in historical settings.