I'm wondering about this on a practical level. For instance, traditional horse wisdom says that horses need space to run around, but I imagine that there were a lot of horses used in daily business before automobiles became widespread, pulling coaches to move people and goods around, and those working horses would not have had an acre to run around in at the end of the day in a large city - or did they? Was there still areas of open pasture in NYC in the late 19th century for urban livestock?

This comes about because I was wondering out loud about the logistics of bringing horse power back to modern urban centres, in a scenario where oil becomes too expensive, and and there is no ready alternate energy source capable of maintaining our current levels of convenience. The concensus was that in modern cities, horses would be a very bad idea, based on any number of factors, foremost being their need for space, the amount of upkeep and care involved, and the damage to their hooves and knees from clomping around on concrete.

But as I said, it seems to me that large urban centres have used quite a lot of horses in the past. How did they handle the dung? Did the horses have shortened working lives due to the environment? Was spooking an ongoing issue? Did city horses have any significant behavioral issues or neuroses as their lives went on?