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Introduction ­ Those who have read Bleak House by Charles Dickens may remember the heavy fogs of London that Dickens painted in ­ these words: Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a ­ great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-­brigs fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of ­great ships fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheez- ing by the firesides of their wards fog in the stem and bowl of the after­ noon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin fog cruelly pinching the toes and fin­ gers of his shivering ­ little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance ­ people on the bridges peep- ing over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they ­ were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds. (Dickens 1997: Chapter I) Dickens’s time was the mid-19th ­ century when industrialization was in full swing. At the time, 2 million coal-­dependent residents crowded London ­today, ­there are 8 million. Dickens did not see the worst of the fog. The ­ mother of all London fogs, the ­ Great Smog of London, descended on the city in December 1952. Daytime vis- ibility was reportedly ­ limited to within just a few meters. Over 4,000 Londoners reportedly died of respiratory system infections. Are conditions any better ­today? A 2013 study by the ­ Great London Authority found that all Londoners ­ were exposed to PM2.5 particle concentrations greater than the World Health Organ­ ization’s air quality guideline. In January 2017, toxic smog once again battered Lon- don. The level of air pollution in London surpassed that of Beijing. Mayor Sadiq Khan issued the highest smog alert, to which he added: “We should be ashamed that our young ­ people—­ the next generation of Londoners—­ are being exposed to ­ these tiny particles of toxic dust that are seriously damaging their lungs and short- ening their life expectancy” (Taylor 2017). Despite all the pro­ gress, London’s atmo- spheric conditions leave the citizens confused. London’s air pollution is only a pixel of the broader picture. Rather than improv- ing, air quality has declined globally. The smog in Beijing, Mumbai, Mexico City, Karachi, and many other world cities ­ today has reached catastrophic levels. In parallel with atmospheric degradation, world cities strug­ gle with population influxes, ris- ing crime rates, slashed funding of education, shortages of affordable housing, increasingly congested traffic, failures in waste management, rising unemployment,