Economic and Environmental Effects of Urbanization

In recent years, urbanization of rural areas has increased. As agriculture, more traditional local services, and small-scale industry give way to modern industry the urban and related commerce with the city drawing on the resources of

an ever-widening area for its own sustenance and goods to be traded or processed into manufactures.

Research in urban ecology finds that larger cities provide more specialized goods and services to the local market and surrounding areas, function as a transportation and wholesale hub for smaller places, and accumulate more capital, financial service provision, and an educated labour force, as well as often concentrating administrative functions for the area in which they lie. This relation among places of different sizes is called the urban hierarchy.

As cities develop, effects can include a dramatic increase in costs, often pricing the local working class out of the market, including such functionaries as employees of the local municipalities. For example, Eric Hobsbawm's book The age of the revolution: 1789–1848, stated "Urban development in our period [1789– 1848] was a gigantic process of class segregation, which pushed the new labouring poor into great morasses of misery outside the centres of government and business and the newly specialized residential areas of the bourgeoisie. The almost universal European division into a 'good' west end and a 'poor' east end of large cities developed in this period." This is likely due the prevailing south-west wind which carries coal smoke and other airborne pollutants downwind, making the western edges of towns preferable to the eastern ones. Similar problems now affect the developing world, rising inequality resulting from rapid urbanization trends. The urban heat island has become a growing concern and is increasing over the years.

The urban heat island is formed when industrial and urban areas are developed and heat becomes more abundant. In rural areas, a large part of the incoming solar energy is used to evaporate water from vegetation and soil. In cities, where less vegetation and exposed soil exists, the majority of the sun‘s energy is absorbed by urban structures and asphalt. Hence, during warm daylight hours, less evaporative cooling in cities allows surface temperatures to rise higher than in rural areas. Additional city heat is given off by vehicles and factories, as well as by industrial and domestic heating and cooling units. This effect causes the

city to become 1 to 6oC warmer than surrounding landscapes. Impacts also include reducing soil moisture and intensification of carbon dioxide emissions.

 

Vocabulary to increase – увеличиваться

sustenance - поддержка

wholesale hub – оптовый центр

airborne pollutants – загрязнения, переносимые по воздуху

morass - болото

abundant - обильный

to evaporate - испаряться

surface - поверхность

vehicle – транспортное средство

moisture - влага impact - воздействие

carbon dioxide – углекислый газ

 

 

Задание 2. Ответьте на вопросы к тексту:

1. What kind of relation is called the urban hierarchy?

2. What made the western edges of European towns preferable to the eastern ones?

3. What problems now affect the developing world?

4. How is the urban heat island formed?

5. What effect causes the city to become 1 to 6oC warmer than surrounding landscapes?

Контрольная работа (2 курс, 4 семестр)