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Academic Reading 20 - Passage 1
The US City and the Natural Environment
A)
While cities and their metropolitan
areas have always interacted with and
shaped
the
natural
environment,
it
is
only
recently
that
historians
have
begun
to
consider
this
relationship.
During
our
own
time,
the
tension
between
natural
and
urbanized
areas
has
increased,
as
the
spread
of
metropolitan populations and urban land
uses has reshaped and destroyed
natural
landscapes and environments.
B)
The
relationship between the city and the natural
environment has actually
been circular,
with cities having massive effects on the natural
environment,
while
the
natural
environment,
in
turn,
has
profoundly
shaped
urban
configurations. Urban
history is filled with stories about how city
dwellers
contended with the forces of
nature that threatened their lives. Nature not
only
caused
many
of
the
annoyances
of
daily
urban
life,
such
as
bad
weather
and
pests,
but
it
also
gave
rise
to
natural
disasters
and
catastrophes
such
as
floods,
fires,
and
earthquakes.
In
order
to
protect
themselves and their
settlements against the forces of nature, cities
built
many
defences
including
flood
walls
and
dams,
earthquake-resistant
buildings, and storage places for food
and water. At times, such protective
steps
sheltered
urbanites
against
the
worst
natural
furies,
but
often
their
own
actions
–
such
as
building
under
the
shadow
of
volcanoes,
or
in
earthquake-prone zones
–
exposed them to danger
from natural hazards.
C)
City
populations require food, water, fuel, and
construction materials, while
urban
industries need natural materials for production
purposes. In order to
fulfill
these
needs,
urbanites
increasingly
had
to
reach
far
beyond
their
boundaries.
In
the
nineteenth
century,
for
instance,
the
demands
of
city
dwellers
for
food
produced
rings
of
garden
farms
around
cities.
In
the
twentieth
century,
as
urban
populations
increased,
the
demand
for
food
drove
the
rise
of
large
factory
farms.
Cities
also
require
fresh
water
supplies in order to
exist
–
engineers built
waterworks, dug wells deeper
and
deeper
into
the
earth
looking
for
groundwater,
and
dammed
and
diverted rivers to obtain water
supplies for domestic and industrial uses. In
the process of obtaining water from
distant locales, cities often transformed
them, making deserts where there had
been fertile agricultural areas.
D)
Urbanites had
to seek locations to dispose of the wastes they
produced.
Initially, they placed wastes
on sites within the city, polluting the air, land,
and water with industrial and domestic
effluents. As cities grew larger, they
disposed
of
their
wastes
by
transporting
them
to
more
distant
locations.
Thus,
cities
constructed
sewerage
systems
for
domestic
wastes.
They
usually
discharged
the
sewage
into
neighbouring
waterways,
often
polluting the water
supply of downstream cities.
The
air
and
the
land
also
became
dumps
for
waste
disposal.
In
the
late
nineteenth
century,
coal
became
the
preferred
fuel
for
industrial,
transportation, and domestic use. But
while providing an inexpensive and
plentiful
energy
supply,
coal
was
also
very
dirty.
The
cities
that
used
it
suffered
from
air
contamination
and
reduced
sunlight,
while
the
cleaning
tasks of
householders were greatly increased.
E)
In
the
late
nineteenth
and
early
twentieth
centuries,
reformers
began
demanding urban
environmental cleanups and public health
improvements.
Women's
groups
often
took
the
lead
in
agitating
for
clean
air
and
clean
water,
showing a greater concern than men in regard to
quality of life and
health-related
issues. The replacement of the horse, first by
electric trolleys
and then by the car,
brought about substantial improvements in street
and
air
sanitation.
The
movements
demanding
clean
air,
however,
and
reduction
of
waterway
pollution
were
largely
unsuccessful.
On
balance,
urban sanitary
conditions were probably somewhat better in the
1920s than
in the late nineteenth
century, but the cost of improvement often was the
exploitation of urban hinterlands for
water supplies, increased downstream
water pollution, and growing automobile
congestion and pollution.
F)
In
the
decades
after
the
1940s,
city
environments
suffered
from
heavy
pollution
as
they
sought
to
cope
with
increased
automobile
usage,
pollution
from industrial
production, new varieties of chemical pesticides
and the wastes
of
an
increasingly
consumer-
oriented
economy.
Cleaner
fuels
and
smoke
control
laws
largely
freed
cities
during
the
1940s
and
1950s
of
the
dense
smoke
that
they
had
previously
suffered
from.
Improved
urban
air
quality
resulted
largely
from
the
substitution
of
natural
gas
and
oil
for
coal
and
the
replacement
of
the
steam
locomotive
by
the
diesel-electric.
However,
great
increases
in
automobile
usage
in
some
larger
cities
produced
the
new
phenomenon of smog, and air pollution
replaced smoke as a major concern.
G)
During these decades, the
suburban out-migration, which had begun in the
nineteenth
century
with
commuter
trains
and
streetcars
and
accelerated
because of the
availability and convenience of the automobile,
now increased
to
a
torrent,
putting
major
strains
on
the
formerly
rural
and
undeveloped
metropolitan
fringes.
To
a
great
extent,
suburban
layouts
ignored
environmental
considerations,
making
little
provision
for
open
space,
producing endless rows of resource-
consuming and fertilizer-dependent lawns,
contaminating
groundwater
through
leaking
septic
tanks,
and
absorbing
excessive
amounts
of
fresh
water
and
energy.
The
growth
of
the
outer
city
since the 1970s reflected a continued
preference on the part of many people in
the
western
world
for
space-intensive
single-family
houses
surrounded
by
lawns, for private automobiles over
public transit, and for the development of
previously
untouched
areas.
Without
better
planning
for
land
use
and
environmental
protection,
urban
life
will,
as
it
has
in
the
past,
continue
to
damage and stress the natural
environment.