Walkshop: Metropolitan Improvements
6 November 2020
This all-day walkshop takes its cues from the ways in which urbanism and pandemics are mutually imbricated as issues of design related to management and control of society. Although set against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic the walkshop is situated historically through an examination the poor laws and the emergence of the problematic of “population” in Victorian London: moralisation, hygiene and class struggle.
Walkshop coordinated by Joao Ruivo.
Download the walkshop programme and related research here
John Snow's 1854 mapping of the Cholera epidemic and Charles Boot's mapping of poverty 1886-1903 are key features of the walk. Due to tidal flows the day began with mudlarking in the river basin of the Thames at Blackfriars.
John Snow's data journalism: the cholera map that changed the world
Visualizing Data To Save Lives A History of Early Public Health Infographics
