"...mein Acker ist die Zeit", Aufsätze zur Umweltgeschichte - Oapen

City and Nature (2007)
The cities listed in Table 1 were new foundations dedicated to the exploitation and
processing of natural minerals. It is obvious that they are mostly located in the
New World, while most Old World cities had precursor settlements. Nevertheless,
quite a few Old World cities developed through the general processing of a vast
variety of natural goods, without specializing on niche products, for example for
Aquileia (amber) or Krefeld (silk). In the case of severe and unfavorable changes in
the natural environment, cities may loose their relevance or even be abandoned
(e.g. Maya cities, Ephesus, Mesopotamia, Mohenjo Daro).
The uneven geographic distribution of natural goods leads directly to the
space-linked ecosystem essentials of materials (see section 1.3.) and energy (especially
fossil fuels, section 1.4.). The increase in the number of cities through history
(urbanization) expands the spatial use and exploitation of the hinterland (see Figure
2.). The hinterland is formed by the various needs and demands of the cities
that depend on it. Therefore in urbanized areas the vast majority of cultivated
landscapes can be considered as byproducts (normally without a master plan) of
urbanization.
Figure 2. Diffusion of urbanization throughout Europe. Source: From M. Antrop, “Landscape
Change and the Urbanization Process in Europe,” Landscape and Urban Planning 67 (2004), pp. 9-27,
Fig.1. (The original caption reads: “The early urbanization in Greek and Roman times expands from
the Southeast from 700 BC to the border of Scotland in AD 400. Universities are created in the cities
and indicate an expanding urbanization from the south before AD 1300 to the Northeast after AD
1500. The urban clusters from Northern Italy and Flanders in the sixteenth century shift and expand
around the North Sea in the nineteenth century.”) Reproduced with permission from Elsevier.
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