To believe that change, and in particular the speed of change, is something peculiar to the twentieth century, is an error

In one generation, between roughly  1840 and 1870, Kentish Town was substantially altered from a suburban village, surrounded by fields, into the townscape we see today. To believe that change, and in particular the speed of change, is something peculiar to the twentieth century, is an error, at least where the physical environment is concerned.. Except in a few specific places, like New Town sites, the changes seen by many people today are as nothing compared with the paroxysms of alteration and despoliation weathered by their great-grandparents.

G. Tindall, The fields beneath (1977; 2010 edition), 143