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

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before, e.g. maintenance and disposal by (energy-consuming) transportation of
waste to garbage dumps outside of towns. Thus cities are consumer exclaves.
Urbanism developed on the energy basis of nutrients for humans (and dependent
animals) and of fuel for domestic and manufacturing processes. For almost
9,000 years the only energy basis was provided by crops and wood. Wind and
water power have added not much directly, but a little indirectly since antiquity.
Fossil fuels came into towns only in the last 500 years, with a culmination around
the 1950s. To sustain the inhabitants of a city, the use and exploitation of the area
surrounding towns is decisive. An interrelation between land use patterns and energy
benefits is predictable. Prosperous cities should not violate cost-benefit principles
with respect to the energy required for transportation. Thus, the hinterlands
of cities generally follow a similar pattern (von-Thünen circles). Irsigler 207 has
adapted von Thünen’s ideas to match up the conditions and situations of medieval
towns, which is a useful model for the general coverage of the area around cities in
agricultural regimes. He suggested an exploitation model of the town hinterland
according to the following spatial divisions:
Close by area
1) horticulture
2) a- specialised crop for technical usage (dyes, fibre)
b- municipal forest
c- logging
d- hydraulic power
e- fatten pasture
3) improved crop rotation
Distant area
4) three-field crop rotation
5) two-field crop rotation
6) a- pasture
b- forestry
If the costs of transportation exceed the specific benefit of the natural product or
of the commodity, the operational balance for a city becomes negative and the
continued existence of the city is endangered. (Southwest American pueblos; decline
of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century; peripheral cities in the former
USSR).
But maintenance can still be provided by higher subsidization inputs. This is
achieved by increased scales for matter/energy flows, usually provided by longdistance
trade using ships (energy subsidization by wind energy). However, this
207 Franz Irsigler, “Bündelung von Energie in der mittelalterlichen Stadt,“ Saeculum 42, (1991), pp.
308–18.