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

140
ready gone (early modern Paris), with the exception of contemporary Buenos Aires,
where the high biomass values are attributable to overpopulated slums.
Overall, we may consider that the human biomass ratios of the vast majority of
contemporary cities are considerably below 1.0 (or within an order of magnitude of
that value). This would imply that cities adjust to a capacity level which balances
the physical needs of residents as well as social demands and options. The numbers
given in Table 5 suggest a capacity optimum below and around 1.0 for cities.
212 The computed values for Paris represent an average surface area per resident
of 15 square meters in 1365 and of 10 square meters in 1637. Even, if these numbers
are incorrect or educated guessing, since many determinants cannot be taken
into account or simply remain unknown, I assume they are reliable within an order
of magnitude.
Increasing density leads to enlarged city areas, in order to give relief to the
residents for functional as well as for anthropological demands. This holds true,
for example, for the reduction of densities in Paris as given in Table 5. Enlarged
areas allow residents to move to suburbs. In some cases, suburbs today are more
densely populated than the centers of the respective cities (see Table 6).
CITY
(1997)
Table 6. Density of Residents in Suburbs of Selected Contemporary Cities.
KM 2
CITY-
RESIDENTS
/ KM 2
SUBURB-KM 2 SUBURB-
RESIDENTS
/ KM 2
Amsterdam 220 4.283 1.253 1.002
Berlin 892 3.900 4.476 178
Hamburg 755 2.300 18.116 130
London 1.578 7.074 8.807 4.883
Vienna 414 3.934 4.664 128
Zurich 92 3.900 847 700
Source: Data from http://www.wien.gv.at/vtx/vtx-rk-xlink?SEITE=019990111009; last
accessed October 14, 2005. One might question these values, as they were computed by
the city authorities to prove that Vienna was the best metropolitan area in Europe with
respect to suburban density.
Density raises the question of “privacy” for people living in highly populated areas.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no analysis available on the “processes of civilization”
in cities, as Norbert Elias did for a variety of other features, and “cities” are also
not a category dealt with in analyses of the Burckhardt and Huizinga type. This again is
remarkable, since cities were the most visible and the most influential structures of the
212 Of course, this value is somewhat arbitrary, as it depends on a number of assumptions that might
be questionable and on numbers that might be doubted. However, it is not the respective value that
is important for my argument, but the similarity of the way in which this value is found for different
cities. Changing the numbers in the calculations would certainly lead to different values, but the
message would be similar.