So, part of this story, I think -- well, it's a terrifying story,
it's a very dark story and it's a story
that continues on in many of the developing cities of the world.
It's also a story really that is fundamentally optimistic,
which is to say that it's possible to solve these problems
if we listen to reason, if we listen to the kind of wisdom of these kinds of maps,
if we listen to people like Snow and Whitehead,
if we listen to the locals who understand
what's going on in these kinds of situations.
And what it ended up doing is making the idea
of large-scale metropolitan living a sustainable one.
When people were looking at 10 percent of their neighborhoods dying
in the space of seven days,
there was a widespread consensus that this couldn't go on,
that people weren't meant to live in cities of 2.5 million people.
But because of what Snow did, because of this map,
because of the whole series of reforms
that happened in the wake of this map,
we now take for granted that cities have 10 million people,
cities like this one are in fact sustainable things.
We don't worry that New York City is going to collapse in on itself