
How air-conditioning created the modern city - scribu
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/14/how-air-conditioning-created-modern-city
======
colanderman
I would argue that the elevator is at least as influential if not more. As I
look around from my 9th story office, nearly every building I see and the
density provided thereof, would have been impossible without the elevator or
something very much like it. (A series of escalators?) How many people want to
climb 20 stories of stairs every day of their life, nevermind the
transportation of equipment, etc.

~~~
avar
Sure, let's imagine a world without elevators.

    
    
        > How many people want to climb 20 stories
        > of stairs every day of their life.
    

I'd guess a lot. How long does it take you to climb 20 stories if you're
having to do it every single day of your life so you're used to it? Let's say
a generous 10 seconds per floor, so that's around 3 and a half minutes.

Just waiting for and taking the elevator will easily take a minute at least.
So we're left with just over 2 minutes.

This is on the order of time that it takes many people to walk from their
parked car to the front door at work, or even just to park their car!

That would be nothing compared to the alternative of there being 1-3 floor
houses everywhere, so you'd need to commute even further than that.

    
    
        > nevermind the transportation of equipment.
    

Almost all of the tall houses in Amsterdam built in pre-elevator times have a
hook on the top floor that can be used to hoist cargo up. Some similar
arrangement could be worked out for modern houses if they didn't have
elevators.

~~~
Johnny555
"How many people want to climb 20 stories... I'd guess a lot"

I'd guess very few -- I work in a 23 story office building (on the 20th floor,
coindidentally), and from my desk I can see the stairway door in the hallway.

Other than maintenance staff, I don't remember seeing a single person use that
door. We have another office on the 15th floor, and I know of no one that uses
the stairs to travel the 5 floors from office to office.

So I think the number of people that _want_ to climb 20 stories by stairs
every day is very low.

~~~
WalterBright
I used to work on the 8th floor of an office building. I took the stairs.
Granted, I was the only one, and 23 is 3x that. I'd still probably take the
stairs and thereby skip the jogging. I'd also prefer the stairs to a long walk
everywhere.

I live 270 ft up a hill, and regularly walk up. At 10 feet per story, that's
27 floors. I'm also the only one on the hill who walks up it.

------
grendelt
A/C drive westward expansion and allowed Houston (and other cities not on the
East coast) to thrive.

Galveston (where I currently live) was here long before A/C. The Storm of 1900
is what drove Houston to grow. Houston is more inland and better situated to
weather the threat of hurricanes than a barrier island. The railroad allowed
Houston to become a nexus of trade (in cotton shipping out of Galveston
originally). The oil boom continued that growth. A/C didn't come along for
many years later. It fueled the cities growth but plenty of people lived on
the Gulf coast to benefit from the breezes off the water. In fact, it was
those breezes that drove the University of Texas to start its medical
hospital, UTMB, in Galveston.

How people managed to live further inland where there was no wind is beyond
me. (There are too many mosquitoes to spend too long outside or have open
windows without screens - besides, even then they'll still find a way to get
through.)

A/C drove folks to move where the climates are warmer but land is more
plentiful. A/C, like the railroad before it, made westward expansion more
doable (bearable?).

Cities like Las Vegas and other desert metropolises sprang up as a direct
result of A/C.

~~~
derekp7
Not sure about more desert conditions, or office buildings, but I do know that
houses used to be built a lot differently before air conditioning. For
example, my parents' house was built just after 1900, and they only put in
central air in the last decade (so I grew up without air conditioning). Even
now, they rarely turn it on, and it is quite comfortable inside Lots of trees
around, smaller windows, covered porch, air flow from the basement, etc.

Compare this to the house I bought built in 1998, it is unlivable without the
air turned on. And even with it running it is still uncomfortable when the
temps get into the mid 90s. It has huge windows, but even with the curtains
closed it was horrible -- there was just no natural airflow in it.

One of my favorite houses was one that a relative had in Mississippi, which
was one roof with three separate living areas and a T-shaped breezeway running
through the house. Another design item was apartments with sun rooms, where
you could open various windows to always catch a cross breeze.

~~~
EADGBE
This.

\- Leaky ("breathable") home constructions vs. air-tight tolerances required
to code now.

\- Region-specific cooling and design practices which aided in the dead of the
summer (or winter!)

\- More geographically-minded decisions: Mature, treed lots for shade (double
points for deciduous trees in winter which let the sun radiate through), more
E/W facing vs N/S.

\- Architecture: Smaller, closed off rooms (shut the door to trap the
heat/cold), breezeways, enclosed porches all seemed a lot more popular then
vs. now when keeping cool (or warm, in the rooms' case) was a priority.

Of course, mileage will vary, but this is something interesting I've found
comparing the house I grew up in (built 1952), my first home (1986), and our
recent build (2018) which are all within <5 miles of each other. FWIW, if the
HVAC doesn't run all day at the new home, it's a noticeable "stagnant air"
when you get home.

------
blt
I live in Los Angeles, where the sun is often hot but the air is dry, and it
cools down at night. You only need A/C during the hottest 2 or 3 months of the
year, and many humbler homes don't have it. Those places are pretty unpleasant
during peak summer.

It would be so easy to make every building comfortable. Design for high
airflow - the air is not muggy. Include long awnings over all windows. This is
obvious: even on the hottest day, it's usually comfortable under a tree. But
the home builders have stubbornly ignored these old and simple solutions. Most
houses are sealed boxes with no window shade at all. I don't understand it.

~~~
neor
Disclaimer; I live in a very moderate climate. So I don't know how this would
scale to hotter cities.

My home is equiped with what would translate to a "heatpump". Its a system
that uses the warmth deep in the earth to help heating up the home in the
winter, but also cools it down in the summer storing excess heat in the well
drilled underneath the home or garden.

What it does in summer is basically run cold water through the underfloor
heating system.

We've had some very hot days for our climate recently (35 to 38 degrees
centigrade, which is around 95 to 100 Fahrenheit) and the temperature inside
remained steady at a comfortable 23 degrees centigrade (around 74 Fahrenheit).

The system uses a lot less energy than air conditioning.

~~~
EADGBE
This is a geothermal heat pump.

There are traditional outside air conditioner units that run in reverse which
use heat in the air, as well.

------
elliottkember
"her husband came from Wisconsin. He liked a log fire. So they would turn up
the air conditioning and light one."

I found myself really unsettled by this. Light a fire, and turn up the air
conditioning?

~~~
dingaling
Aside the inefficiency, surely it's not necessary to 'turn up' the AC in that
case? I thought that you set a target temperature once and just leave it
there?

Domestic AC is very rare in the UK so I may have misunderstood.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
The temperature won't be consistent throughout the room if you have a big heat
source like a fire in part of the room, so you would need to set it too a
lower temperature to keep it comfortable near the fire.

------
gandreani
> The US expends more energy on air conditioning, for example, than the whole
> of Africa does on everything. Then again, it expends even more energy on hot
> water, which doesn’t get the same rap.

I'd like to know where the author got that information from. I recently
thought that a lot of homes (not apartment buildings) could be made energy
neutral with a combination of geothermal hvac, solar water heating, and solar
panels

The geothermal would help drive up the efficiency of the HVAC systems
(considerably), and the solar heating would take care of the second highest
energy user in the home. My guess is that with those two options most houses
could then handle their other energy needs with a modest 3-5kw solar array and
"small" battery bank

~~~
rconti
Sure, but even if that's true, new construction homes probably represent a
minuscule fraction of the housing stock in the US. Not to mention what
minuscule percentage of new construction is built in an energy neutral
fashion.

~~~
nerdponx
Then again, new-construction homes are much more efficient. Insulation and
window technology is much better than it used to be.

------
fisherjeff
Always interesting: Historical populations of Phoenix[0] and Tucson[0] – note
the huge 1960s AC booms.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona#Demographics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona#Demographics)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson,_Arizona#Demographics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson,_Arizona#Demographics)

------
jandrese
I was talking with my parents about what people did in New Orleans before they
had air conditioning. Turns out that what they did was die. There were quite a
number of heat related deaths every year before A/C came along, something like
15% of the population would die off.

In the event of the apocalypse New Orleans will be one of the first cities to
go. Between losing the pumps, the oppressive heat (exacerbated by global
warming), and the insects the survivors would be forced to flee the city if
they wanted to survive.

~~~
batiudrami
I don't doubt that there were heat deaths in summer (Europe sees them every
year as air conditioning is not normal for many countries) but 15% a year is
insane - you'd need to be at least an order of magnitude off to have a
sustainable population.

~~~
jandrese
Sustaining the city required a continual influx of residents. To be fair, a
lot of the deaths were from slaves, but it was something of a deathtrap
between the high heat, humidity, hot nights, disease carrying insects,
flooding, and hurricanes. Were it not such a valuable port the city would
probably have died out.

------
usaphp
> Air conditioning is anti-social. It buys its owner comfort at the cost of
> shifting the surplus heat somewhere else

You could make the same argument for heating, no?

~~~
thaumasiotes
You don't usually do heating in cases where you're worried about surplus heat.
You could make the same argument for every productive activity _except_
heating...

~~~
rconti
You could argue we should all be worried about surplus heat, all the time.

I heard an interesting argument about the efficiency of air conditioning the
other day. It pointed out that, while removing heat from a room is of course
not 100% efficient, it is merely shifting heat from one place to another (plus
some waste).

Whereas heating is ALL "waste". So more waste heat should be generated from,
and more energy used in, heating vs air conditioning.

We definitely have a bias to accept that the New Englander is virtuous in
heating his or her home in the winter, but the Arizonan is wasteful in cooling
their "inhospitable" house in the summer.

Maybe we should rethink this.

~~~
photojosh
If we're talking about electrical heating, this is only true for resistive
heating, which is indeed all "waste heat". But many air conditioners can run
in "reverse cycle" [0], where you're transferring outside heat back in, and is
much more efficient, apparently 50% cheaper to run in electricity costs.

When you run one of these systems, your New Englander and Arizonan are
virtuous to the degree of the difference between inside and outside
temperatures. ;)

There's even now some combined cycle AC systems which use the extracted heat
to generate your hot water [1], sadly not yet available/cost-effective for
small residential installations, but they're only off by a factor of 2 now
(8kW is the smallest system I've seen, my central air is 4kW).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump)
[1] [http://www.mitsubishielectric.com.au/air-to-water-hot-
water-...](http://www.mitsubishielectric.com.au/air-to-water-hot-water-heat-
pumps.html)

~~~
jdmichal
I actually just replaced a 20-year-old AC system that had a link to the hot
water system. Installers just removed the water heater link entirely. Said
that the extra resistance and energy involved in the exchange cost more than
just venting the heat in modern systems with high SEER ratings. No idea if
that's accurate; just what I heard.

------
web007
99% Invisible (design podcast) had a story about this as well, how the
American south and west became habitable due to air conditioning.

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-
delight/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/)

------
ajuc
In some climates I guess. Most of Europe doesn't even have AC, it's rarely
needed.

~~~
redct
Neither do big parts of the US. Most residential buildings in New England, New
York, parts of the Pacific Northwest... even the Bay Area.

------
swasheck
Timely post as I sit in Seoul on holiday in the midst of their hottest summer.
It's the hottest, muggiest, most sticky heat I've experienced and air
conditioning is driving the majority of my experiences right now.

------
akashtndn
I live in New Delhi, India and it can get unbearably hot here during the
summer. Temperatures as high as 40 degree Celsius and above are taken for
granted. Air conditioning is of immense value in a region like this. But for
majority of the population, it is a luxury. Even those with air conditioning
use it in moderation to keep electricity bills in check.

Having moved across three different apartments in the same locality over the
past 2 years, I've experienced how even slight improvements in architecture
can significantly decrease the effects of heat-wave. The author's point does
hit home.

------
dmritard96
I have always been fascinated by Air conditioning. Back in highschool, I wrote
a paper all about how South Florida became inhabitable as a result fo AC.
After college, I started an air conditioning related startup oddly enough.

------
mrfusion
I’ve always wondered how houses would be built in hot areas if AC wasn’t
available.

~~~
ghaff
Depends if you're talking dry or wet heat.

For dry, you see a fair number of examples in the US southwest. One of the
things you do is take advantage of the fact that there are big temperature
swings between daytime and nighttime. You can also use cooling towers. You get
some idea from the design of the Zion Visitor's Center. [1] It's not hot-hot
there (it's high but gives you some idea).

Wet hot is a lot harder. Utilize shade where you can. Lots of cross-
ventilation. Basically very open buildings (subject to how big a problem
biting insects are of course--though you can use screens in that case).

[1] [https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/zion-canyon-visitor-
ce...](https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/zion-canyon-visitor-center.htm)

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, I visited the Andrew Jackson home and there were a bunch of corridors
basically designed to convey wind (though ironically they keep them shut now
because the moisture would damage the home)

------
zkms
LKY concurred on this as well:

> Air conditioning. Air conditioning was a most important invention for us,
> perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of
> civilization by making development possible in the tropics.

> Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours
> or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to
> install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This
> was key to public efficiency.

------
mnm1
Great article but I was hoping to read arguments about why we should turn off
air conditioning as the headline promised yet none were provided. I guess the
author couldn't think of any despite alluding to costs and a lack of public
spaces. Interesting piece nonetheless.

~~~
dharma1
I guess it's quite obvious - energy consumption, particularly non-renewable.

------
m1sta_
[https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/EF/Areas/Solar/Solar-
coolin...](https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/EF/Areas/Solar/Solar-
cooling/Solar-cooling-air-conditioning)

------
gdrift

      The rise of Hollywood in the 1920s would have been slowed if, as previously, theatres had needed to close in hot weather.
    

Reminds me of a movie theater were I grew up that had no roof at all just open
sky above. Obviously only good for night time at summer.

~~~
maxerickson
I wonder to what extent AC contributed to the decline of drive-in theatres.

------
mirimir
There's no mention of cross-season heat/cold storage, in places where it's
cold in the winter, and hot in the summer. I wonder why that hasn't taken off.

~~~
mmirate
Perhaps because it is science-fiction?

~~~
mirimir
There have been some demonstration projects.[0,1] But yeah, maybe it's not
workable.

0) [https://www.delta.tudelft.nl/article/can-underground-heat-
st...](https://www.delta.tudelft.nl/article/can-underground-heat-storage-
replace-gas-netherlands)

1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storage)

~~~
mmirate
Apologies; I just find it rather absurd that thermal energy could be stored in
what apparently are water tanks, for months at a time, without losing most of
the energy to conduction/convection with whatever surrounds the tanks.

After all, if we could do that, then certainly the same materials could allow
smaller houses in cold climates to maintain a comfortable temperature
throughout an entire winter without needing any active heating.

~~~
dredmorbius
_the same materials could allow smaller houses in cold climates to maintain a
comfortable temperature throughout an entire winter without needing any active
heating._

That's the general notion behind PassivHaus.

Integral design, internal thermal storage, situational orientation appropriate
to site, thermal mass, extensive insulation, minimised building penetrations,
and mitigations to address resulting consequences, particularly air exchange,
moisture, and condensation.

The engineering is impressive. I recommend the videos, which are long, but
information-dense and detailed.

[http://www.reina-llc.com/resources/presentations/](http://www.reina-
llc.com/resources/presentations/)

------
eeZah7Ux
This is silly. Most of European cities were build densely and with 4-5 stories
buildings centuries before air conditioning.

------
jdlyga
I wish the US had more ductless air conditioners. Window and wall AC's are old
technology, loud, and bulky.

~~~
gascan
The US is full of large, leaky, poorly insulated houses designed without any
mind paid to thermal performance. Until that changes, ductless simply doesn't
work for many people.

I think ductless will come on its own as US houses improve.

~~~
amag
Not just the US.. A friend of a friend moved to the UK and built a house the
way we do in northern Europe. Her neighbors pitied her in the winter because
the roof of her house was covered in snow...

------
doombolt
St. Petersburg is one of the finest cities and it will be so without either
air conditioning or elevators. It also has 1.5M population capacity walkable
urban core so car isn't needed either.

I think the same, if not more, can be said about London or Amsterdam.

But, indeed, most of America's greatest cities are land reclaimed from heat.

~~~
jonknee
St Petersburg, London and Amsterdam are not "modern cities". Obviously there
are tons of large cities that have been around before AC, but the article
cites the rise of cities (and population) in places that were previously
undesirable because of the warm climate. AC has caused a migration of sorts
towards warmer places.

> Cities have boomed in places where, previously, the climate would have held
> them back. In 1950, 28% of the population of the US lived in its sunbelt,
> 40% in 2000. The combined population of the Gulf cities went from less than
> 500,000 before 1950 to 20 million now. Neither the rise of Singapore, nor
> the exploding cities of China and India, would have happened in the same way
> if they had still relied on punkah fans, shady verandas and afternoon naps.

~~~
emodendroket
The article also mentions developments which affect even those old cities that
A/C made possible -- such as the glass skyscraper

