Environmental problems in ancient cities. Environmental problems of ancient agricultural civilizations

11.3. Cities and nature

Environmental problems of cities

It is often believed that the environmental condition of cities has noticeably deteriorated in recent decades as a result of the rapid development of industrial production. But this is a misconception. Environmental problems of cities arose along with their birth. The cities of the ancient world were characterized by a very crowded population. For example, in Alexandria the population density in the 1st–2nd centuries. reached 760 people, in Rome - 1,500 people per 1 hectare (for comparison, let’s say that in the center of modern New York no more than 1 thousand people live per 1 hectare). The width of streets in Rome did not exceed 1.5–4 m, in Babylon – 1.5–3 m. The sanitary improvement of cities was at an extremely low level. All this led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics, pandemics, in which diseases covered the entire country, or even several neighboring countries. The first recorded plague pandemic (known in literature as the “Plague of Justinian”) occurred in the 6th century. in the Eastern Roman Empire and covered many countries of the world. Over 50 years, the plague claimed about 100 million human lives.

Now it is difficult to even imagine how ancient cities with their many thousands of people could manage without public transport, without street lighting, without sewerage and other elements of urban amenities. And, probably, it is no coincidence that it was at that time that many philosophers began to have doubts about the advisability of the existence of large cities. Aristotle, Plato, Hippodamus of Miletus, and later Vitruvius repeatedly came out with treatises that addressed issues of the optimal size of settlements and their structure, problems of planning, construction art, architecture, and even the relationship with the natural environment.

Medieval cities were already significantly smaller in size than their classical counterparts and rarely numbered more than several tens of thousands of inhabitants. Thus, in the 14th century. the population of the largest European cities - London and Paris - was 100 and 30 thousand inhabitants, respectively. However, urban environmental problems have not become less acute. Epidemics continued to be the main scourge. The second plague pandemic, the Black Death, broke out in the 14th century. and killed almost a third of Europe's population.

With the development of industry, rapidly growing capitalist cities quickly surpassed the population of their predecessors. In 1850, London crossed the million mark, then Paris. By the beginning of the 20th century. there were already 12 “millionaire” cities in the world (including two in Russia). The growth of large cities proceeded at an ever faster pace. And again, as the most formidable manifestation of the disharmony between man and nature, outbreaks of epidemics of dysentery, cholera, and typhoid fever began one after another. The rivers in the cities were terribly polluted. The Thames in London began to be called the “black river”. Fetid streams and ponds in other large cities became sources of gastrointestinal epidemics. Thus, in 1837, in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, a tenth of the population fell ill with typhoid fever and approximately a third of patients died. From 1817 to 1926, six cholera pandemics were recorded in Europe. In Russia, in 1848 alone, about 700 thousand people died from cholera. However, over time, thanks to the achievements of science and technology, advances in biology and medicine, and the development of water supply and sewerage systems, the epidemiological danger began to weaken significantly. We can say that at that stage the environmental crisis of large cities was overcome. Of course, such overcoming each time cost colossal efforts and sacrifices, but the collective intelligence, perseverance and ingenuity of people always turned out to be stronger than the crisis situations they themselves created.

Scientific and technical achievements based on outstanding natural scientific discoveries of the 20th century. contributed to the rapid development of productive forces. This is not only the enormous successes of nuclear physics, molecular biology, chemistry, and space exploration, but also the rapid, continuous growth in the number of large cities and urban population. The volume of industrial production has increased hundreds and thousands of times, the power supply of humanity has increased more than 1000 times, the speed of movement has increased by 400 times, the speed of information transfer has increased by millions of times, etc. Such active human activity, of course, does not pass without a trace on nature , since resources are drawn directly from the biosphere

And this is only one side of the environmental problems of a big city. Another is that in addition to consuming natural resources and energy drawn from vast spaces, a modern city with a million people produces a huge amount of waste. Such a city annually emits into the atmosphere at least 10–11 million tons of water vapor, 1.5–2 million tons of dust, 1.5 million tons of carbon monoxide, 0.25 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 0.3 million tons of nitrogen oxides and a large the amount of other pollution that is not indifferent to human health and the environment. In terms of the scale of its impact on the atmosphere, a modern city can be compared to a volcano.

What are the features of the current environmental problems of large cities? First of all, there are numerous sources of environmental impact and their scale. Industry and transport - and these are hundreds of large enterprises, hundreds of thousands or even millions of vehicles - are the main culprits of pollution of the urban environment. The nature of waste has also changed in our time. Previously, almost all waste was of natural origin (bones, wool, natural fabrics, wood, paper, manure, etc.), and they were easily included in the cycle of nature. Nowadays, a significant part of waste is synthetic substances. Their transformation in natural conditions occurs extremely slowly.

One of the environmental problems is associated with the intensive growth of non-traditional “pollution”, which has a wave nature. The electromagnetic fields of high voltage power lines, radio broadcasting and television stations, as well as a large number of electric motors are increasing. The overall level of acoustic noise increases (due to high transport speeds, due to the operation of various mechanisms and machines). Ultraviolet radiation, on the contrary, decreases (due to air pollution). Energy costs per unit area increase, and, consequently, heat transfer and thermal pollution increase. Under the influence of the huge masses of multi-story buildings, the properties of the geological rocks on which the city stands change.

The consequences of such phenomena for people and the environment have not yet been sufficiently studied. But they are no less dangerous than pollution of water and air basins and soil and vegetation cover. For residents of large cities, all this together results in a great overstrain of the nervous system. City dwellers get tired quickly, are susceptible to various diseases and neuroses, and suffer from increased irritability. Chronically poor health of a significant part of urban residents in some Western countries is considered a specific disease. It was called "urbanite".

Features of megacities

One of the very difficult modern environmental problems is associated with the rapid growth of cities and the expansion of their territory. Cities are changing not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Gigantic metropolises, clusters of cities with multi-million populations spread over many hundreds of square kilometers, absorbing neighboring settlements and forming urban agglomerations, urbanized areas - megacities. They extend in some cases for hundreds of kilometers. Thus, on the Atlantic coast of the United States, one might say, a huge urbanized area with a population of 80 million people has already formed. It was called Boswash (merged agglomerations of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and other cities). By 2000 in America there will be two more giant urbanized areas - China in the Great Lakes region (a group of cities led by Chicago and Pittsburgh) with a population of 40 million people and San San in California (San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego) with population of 20 million people. In Japan, a group of millionaire cities - Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka - formed one of the world's largest megacities - Tokaido, where 60 million people live - half of the country's population. Huge populous agglomerations have developed in Germany (Ruhr), England (London and Birmingham), the Netherlands (Randstad Holland) and other countries.

The emergence of urban agglomerations can be spoken of as a qualitatively new stage in the relationship between the city and nature. The processes of interaction between a modern urban agglomeration and the natural environment are complex, multifaceted, and extremely difficult to manage.

Urban agglomerations and urbanized areas are very vast territories in which nature has been deeply changed by economic activities. Moreover, radical transformations of nature occur not only within the city, but also far beyond its borders. For example, physical and geological changes in soils and groundwater appear, depending on specific conditions, at a depth of up to 800 m and within a radius of 25–30 km. These are pollution, compaction and disruption of the structure of soils and soils, the formation of craters, etc. At even greater distances, biogeochemical changes in the environment are noticeable: depletion of flora and fauna, forest degradation, soil acidification. First of all, people living in the zone of influence of a city or agglomeration suffer from this. They breathe poisoned air, drink contaminated water, and eat foods laden with chemicals.

Experts believe that in the next decade the number of millionaire cities on Earth will apparently approach 300. About half of them will have at least 3 million people each. The traditional “record holders” – New York, Tokyo, London – will be supplanted by the largest cities in developing countries. These will be truly unprecedented monster cities. The population of the largest of them by this time will be: Mexico City - 26.3 million, Sao Paulo - 24 million, Tokyo - 17.1, Calcutta - 16.6 million, Bombay - 16, New York - 15.5, Shanghai – 13.8, Seoul – 13.5, Delhi and Rio de Janeiro – 13.3 each, Buenos Aires and Cairo – 13.2 million people each. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Tashkent are also included or very soon will be included in the category of multimillion-dollar cities.

Is it advisable to repeat the mistakes of Western urbanism and deliberately follow the path of creating megacities where this can still be avoided without much difficulty? With the rapid growth of cities, environmental problems are also rapidly worsening. Improving the health of the urban environment is one of the most pressing social challenges. The first steps to solve this problem are the creation of progressive low-waste technologies, silent and environmentally friendly transport. Environmental problems of cities are closely related to urban planning problems. City planning, placement of large industrial enterprises and other complexes, taking into account their growth and development, choice of transport system - all this requires qualified environmental assessment.

One of the largest cities in the world is Moscow. Observations show that the state of the environment in Moscow is deteriorating, and the environmental and geological risk of human habitation is increasing. This is not unique to Moscow; it also happens in most other large cities in the world. The structure of the giant city is extremely complex and diverse. On the territory of Moscow there are more than 2,800 industrial facilities, including many enterprises with high environmental risk, more than 40 thousand large residential buildings, 12 thermal power plants, 4 state district power plants, 53 district and quarterly thermal stations, 2 thousand local boiler houses. There is an extensive network of urban transport: the length of bus, trolleybus, and tram lines is 3,800 km, and the length of metro lines is 240 km. Under the city there is a dense interweaving of water, heat, electricity, sewerage, gas pipelines, radio and telephone cables.

Such hyperconcentration of structures and urban services inevitably leads to disruptions in the stability of the geological environment. The density and structure of the soil changes, uneven subsidence of individual sections of the earth's surface occurs, deep failures, landslides, and flooding are formed. And this in turn causes premature destruction of buildings and underground communications. Emergency situations are created, often life-threatening. The urban economy is suffering enormous damage.

It has been established that almost half of Moscow’s territory (48%) is in a geological risk zone. In one and a half to two decades, according to forecasts, about 12% of the city’s territory will be added to this. The Moscow air basin is also in a serious condition. In addition to individual chemical elements, it contains another 1,200 different compounds. Already in the atmosphere they react and new compounds are formed. Every year, from 1 to 1.2 million tons of harmful chemicals are released into the air of the capital. A small part of them is carried away by the winds outside the city, but the main part remains in Moscow, and every year each Muscovite accounts for 100–150 kg of air pollutants.

The beginning of the 90s was marked by a reduction in emissions of harmful substances from city enterprises. A significant part of the cupola furnaces were closed, and other furnaces were equipped with devices that prevent harmful emissions into the air. Other measures are being taken to improve the health of the urban environment.

11.4. Solving recycling problems

Recycling of environmentally hazardous gases

Recently, many people are increasingly aware of themselves as residents of one communal apartment with a general vulnerable atmosphere. If we continue to throw nitrogen and sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide and dioxide into it, we can expect the most tragic consequences. It is known that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect with the threat of melting glaciers. And if the total amount of ice decreases by only 10%, then the level of the world's oceans will rise by 5.5 m. Obviously, huge coastal areas will be flooded,

The Earth's atmosphere currently contains about 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide, and billions of tons are added to this amount by industry and transport. Part of this amount is absorbed by the vegetation of the Earth, part is dissolved in the ocean. Scientists in many countries around the world are working on how to get rid of excess carbon dioxide. For example, US scientists proposed converting carbon dioxide into dry ice or liquid, and then carrying it out of the atmosphere with rockets. However, calculations show that to put carbon dioxide into orbit, it is necessary to burn so much fuel that the amount of the same gas released during fuel combustion exceeds the amount of gas sent into space.

Swiss experts propose converting emissions from industrial stokers into dry ice, but not throwing it outside the Earth, but storing it somewhere in the north in storage facilities insulated with foam plastic. Dry ice will slowly evaporate, which will at least delay the development of the greenhouse effect. However, to store just half of the carbon dioxide emitted annually by Germany alone, ten balls of dry ice with a diameter of 400 m would have to be made. Other scientists hope to somehow enhance the natural processes that lead to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For example, expand the areas occupied by forests on the planet. However, to absorb emissions from coal-fired thermal power plants alone, Germany will have to plant 36 thousand km 2 with forest. Environmentalists object to the idea of American oceanographers to disperse iron powder into Antarctic water to stimulate the proliferation of planktonic algae, which could absorb more carbon dioxide. In addition, experiments carried out on a small scale showed the low efficiency of this method. The Japanese propose to develop, using genetic engineering, especially active breeds of algae that would actively absorb carbon dioxide, converting it into biomass. However, the seas can turn into “jelly” from multiplied algae.

The idea of the employees of the oil company Shell seems more practical: to inject carbon dioxide, first transferring it into the liquid phase, into depleted oil and gas-bearing formations. In addition, liquid carbon dioxide will displace remaining oil and natural gas to the surface. True, the cost of electricity from a thermal power plant equipped with the necessary equipment for this will increase by 40%, and the profit from additionally extracted fossil fuels will reduce this price by only 2%. Yes, there are no depleted gas deposits in the world yet large enough for such storage. Free space in Tyumen or Holland will appear only in a few decades.

So far, the most promising idea seems to be sending carbon dioxide to the bottom of the seas and oceans. You can, for example, drown blocks of dry ice in the open sea (it is heavier than water). When transported at sea no further than 200 km from the coast, the cost of electricity will increase by the same 40%. If you pump liquid carbon dioxide to a depth of about 3000 m, the price of electricity will increase less - by 35%. In addition, there is a danger of such measures. After all, the gas will cover hundreds of square kilometers of the ocean floor with a suffocating layer, destroying all life there. And it is possible that, under the influence of deep currents, it will eventually escape from the depths of the sea, like from an uncorked bottle of champagne. In 1986, such a case was observed in Cameroon: about a billion cubic meters of carbon dioxide, accumulated at the bottom as a result of volcanic processes, escaped from the depths of Lake Nios. Hundreds of local residents and their livestock died in the valley surrounding the lake. It seems that humanity has no other choice but to limit the burning of fossil fuels.

Together with carbon dioxide, much more dangerous gases - sulfur oxides - are released into the atmosphere. It is known that sulfur oxides are formed during the combustion of fuel - coal or petroleum products containing sulfur. When they are burned, sulfur dioxide gases are formed, polluting the atmosphere. During cleaning, smoke is passed through bulky and expensive cleaning devices. Japanese specialists have proposed a more effective method - a microbiological method for purifying coal from sulfur.

Household disposalwaste

In recent decades, more than ever, people have begun to pay attention to the environment. They started talking about it in alarming tones, because in the atmosphere, the soil, in everything that grows and lives on it and in it, as well as in the aquatic environment (rivers, lakes and seas) - everywhere, previously unknown conditions began to appear more and more noticeably and sharply. observed deviations. People are increasingly saying that the environment is on the brink of disaster and needs to be urgently saved.

Well-equipped with various equipment and other means, man directly influences nature: he extracts, uses, and processes earthly wealth in unprecedented quantities. Every year it interferes more and more noticeably with the natural environment that has naturally developed over thousands of years. At the same time, nature changes beyond recognition. This process has already spread to almost the entire globe.

In many industrialized countries, measures against environmental pollution are already being taken seriously in practice and achieving excellent results. Let us consider in more detail how environmental problems are solved, for example, in the Rhine-Westphalian industrial region of Germany. Not so long ago, this area was considered one of the most ecologically disadvantaged not only in all of Western Europe, but also in the world. Indeed, here, to the north and west of the Rhine Slate Mountains, industry and transport have developed extremely rapidly over the last century, and cities and workers' settlements have grown rapidly. There are probably no such abundantly built-up and so densely populated places even in the most populous areas of Japan and China. The standard of living in Germany has been very high for decades. Therefore, many people have their own houses and almost every house has a small plot of land for a garden, vegetable garden and flower bed, outbuildings, garages and cars. You can imagine how much household and various other garbage was thrown into landfills here day after day, year after year, and then burned right in the field. And how many chimneys there were, choking with smoke—factory, factory, and home! What a veil of smog hung over the cities, what fog constantly shrouded everything! What a violet-oily sheen the sun shone in the waters of the Ruhr, Rhine and other seemingly hopelessly diseased local rivers! They were already a kind of symbols of human pollution of nature.

“Three decades ago, our sky here looked more like a shaggy, dirty blanket than azure,” says one waste recycling specialist. What is their recycling facility like? Bluish-gray-blue buildings, two white tall thin pipes - everything looks surprisingly light and elegant. And the earth, and the sky above it, and in general everything around here has really changed beyond recognition. Even the asphalt and concrete on the driveways appear blue. There are green lawns and young trees all around. This facility, the Herten Recycling Center, occupies a much smaller area than a typical burning landfill. It was built on a vacant lot; a lot has already been done in its workshops to transform, green, and decorate the surrounding area.

In Germany, on average, up to 400 kg of household waste alone accumulates per resident per year. An even larger share of what has to be burned is waste from production - industrial, commercial, craft and others, as well as from trade, food and services, and transport from medical institutions. The so-called urban waste is also generated in considerable quantities. All this together per person in Germany per year amounts to 4.5–4.6 tons.

In a garbage “crematorium” it is not easy to burn a wide variety of waste. The production of secondary products is also established here. After all, the company is called that: Center for Secondary Raw Materials Extraction in Herten. The ash generated from burnt plastic bags and various containers of this kind is again used to make them. “Residual inert products” are collected in huge “bags.” In a day they are collected up to 10 tons and immediately taken to the “mountain”, where they are used as soil for green spaces. For example, in Gelsenkirchen they have been making a “mountain” out of them for more than a quarter of a century. It occupies about 100 hectares. In the past, a dull, vast wasteland is being transformed into a cultural park, a “green zone.” Gradually, day after day, the soil and subsoil environment of the “torah” is formed, “laid out”, and a green world develops on it. New technological projects for processing waste from secondary extraction of raw materials are being developed.

It is inevitable that enterprises for the secondary extraction of raw materials will have to be built near Moscow, and near St. Petersburg, and near other cities. In addition, such enterprises provide a lot of electrical energy.

Nuclear waste disposal

The life of modern society is unthinkable without powerful sources of energy. There are few of them - hydro, thermal and nuclear power plants. Using wind, solar, tidal energy, etc. has not yet become widespread. Thermal power plants emit huge amounts of dust and gases into the air. They contain both radionuclides and sulfur, which then returns to the earth in the form of acid precipitation. Water resources, even in our huge country, are limited, and besides, the construction of hydroelectric power stations in most cases leads to undesirable changes in the landscape and climate. In the near future, one of the main sources of energy will be nuclear power plants. They have many advantages, including environmental ones, and the use of reliable protection can make them quite safe. But one more important question remains: what to do with radioactive waste? All radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, accumulated over the entire period of their operation, is stored mainly on the territory of the stations. In general, the current waste management scheme at the nuclear power plant so far ensures complete safety, has no impact on the environment and complies with IAEA requirements. However, the storage facilities are already overflowing and require expansion and reconstruction. In addition, the time has come to dismantle stations that have served their useful life. The estimated operating time of domestic reactors is 30 years. From 2000, reactors will be shut down almost every year. And until a simple and cheap way to dispose of radioactive waste is found, it is premature to talk about serious prospects for nuclear energy.

Currently, radioactive waste is contained in special storage facilities containing steel containers in which the waste is fused together with a glass-mineral matrix. They have not yet been buried, but burial projects are being actively developed. Sometimes the question is discussed: is it necessary to bury waste at all, maybe it should continue to be stored this way - after all, it is possible that some isotope will be needed by future technology? The point, however, is that the amount of waste is constantly growing and accumulating, so that in the future this source of useful elements is unlikely to dry up. If necessary, the processing technology will simply be changed. The problem is different. Near-surface repositories guarantee safety only for about a hundred years, and the waste will become inactive only after several million years.

One more question. Can the thermal energy released by nuclear waste be used, for example, for heating? It is possible, but it is irrational. On the one hand, the heat release of the waste is not that great, much less than the heat generated in the reactor. On the other hand, using waste for heating would require very expensive radiation safety. In thermal energy, the situation is similar: there are many ways to better use the heat that goes into the chimney, but at some level this is unprofitable. Therefore, nuclear waste must be disposed of.

The well-known idea of processing long-lived radioactive isotopes into nuclei with a shorter lifetime using nuclear reactions occurring in the reactors themselves, when operating them in a special mode, is being discussed. It would seem that it is simpler, and no additional equipment is needed. Unfortunately, the difference in the rates of production of new and processing of already formed long-lived isotopes is small, and, as calculations show, a positive balance will occur only after about 500 years. Until this time, humanity will “drown” in mountains of radioactive waste. In other words, reactors are unlikely to be able to cure themselves of radioactivity.

Radioactive waste can be isolated in special thick-walled burial grounds. The only trouble is that such burials must be designed for at least a hundred thousand years of safe storage. How can you predict what might happen over such a huge period? Be that as it may, spent nuclear fuel storage facilities should be located in places where earthquakes, displacements or fractures of soil layers, etc. are obviously excluded. In addition, since radioactive decay is accompanied by heating of the decaying substance, the slag hidden in the repository must also be cooled . If the storage conditions are incorrect, overheating and even an explosion of hot slag can occur.

In some countries, storage facilities for particularly dangerous long-lived isotopes in slag are located underground at a depth of several hundred meters, surrounded by rocks. Containers with slag are equipped with thick anti-corrosion shells and multi-meter layers of clay that prevent groundwater from seeping through. One of these storage facilities is being built in Sweden at a depth of half a kilometer. This complex engineering structure is equipped with a variety of control equipment. Experts are confident in the reliability of this ultra-deep radioactive repository. This confidence is inspired by a natural ore formation discovered in Canada at a depth of 430 m with a volume of over a million cubic meters with a huge uranium content of up to 55% (ordinary ores contain percentages or even fractions of a percent of this element). This unique formation, which arose as a result of sedimentary processes approximately 1.3 million years ago, is surrounded by a layer of clay with a thickness in different places from 5 to 30 m, which really tightly isolated the uranium and its decay products. No traces of either increased radioactivity or increased temperature were found on the surface above the ore formation and in its vicinity. However, what will it be like in other places and under other conditions?

In some places, radioactive slag is vitrified, turning into durable monolithic blocks. The storage facilities are equipped with special heat control and removal systems. To confirm the reliability of this method, we can again refer to a natural phenomenon. In Equatorial Africa, in Gabon, about 2 million years ago, it happened that water and uranium ore were collected in a stone bowl created by nature itself inside rocks and in such proportions that a natural, “without any human intervention” nuclear reactor was created, and there, for some time, until the accumulated uranium burned out, a fission chain reaction took place. Plutonium and the same radioactive fragments were formed, as in our artificially created atomic boilers. Isotopic analysis of water, soil and surrounding rocks showed that radioactivity remained walled up and in the 2 million years that have passed since then, its diffusion has been insignificant. This allows us to hope that vitrified sources of radioactivity will also remain tightly isolated for the next hundred thousand years.

Sometimes slag is walled up in blocks of especially strong concrete, which are dumped into the ocean depths, although this is far from the best gift to our descendants. Recently, the possibility of throwing containers with long-lived isotopes using rockets onto the invisible far side of the Moon has been seriously discussed. But how can we ensure a 100% guarantee that all launches will be successful and that none of the launch vehicles will explode in the earth’s atmosphere and cover it with deadly ash? The risk is very high. And in general, we don’t know why our descendants will need the far side of the Moon.

And a lot of radioactive waste is generated at nuclear power plants. For example, in Sweden, whose energy is 50% nuclear, by 2010. approximately 200 thousand m3 of radioactive waste requiring burial will accumulate, of which 15% contain long-lived isotopes - remnants of concentrated nuclear fuel that require particularly reliable disposal. This volume is comparable to the volume of a concert hall and only for small Sweden!

Many experts come to the conclusion: the most rational place for burial is the bowels of the Earth. To guarantee radiation, the burial depth must be at least half a kilometer. For greater safety, it is better to place the waste even deeper, but, alas, the cost of mining increases faster than the square of the depth. Relatively recently, the idea of burying high-level nuclear waste in deep wells filled with a low-melting, inert, waterproof environment was put forward. The most successful filling of wells may be natural sulfur. Sealed capsules with high-level waste are immersed to the bottom of the well, melting the sulfur with its own heat release. Other methods of disposal of radioactive waste are also proposed.

It is often believed that the environmental condition of cities has noticeably deteriorated in recent decades as a result of the rapid development of industrial production. But this is a fallacy. Environmental problems of cities arose along with their birth. The cities of the ancient world were characterized by a very crowded population. For example, in Alexandria the population density in the I-II centuries. reached 760 people, in Rome - 1,500 people per 1 hectare (for comparison, let’s say that in the center of modern New York no more than 1 thousand people live per 1 hectare). The width of streets in Rome did not exceed 1.5-4 m, in Babylon - 1.5-3 m. The sanitary improvement of cities was at an extremely low level. All this led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics, pandemics, in which diseases covered the entire country, or even several neighboring countries. The first recorded plague pandemic (it became known in literature as the “Plague of Justinian”) occurred in the 6th century. in the Eastern Roman Empire and covered many countries of the world. Over 50 years, the plague claimed about 100 million human lives.

With the development of industry, rapidly growing capitalist cities quickly surpassed the population of their predecessors. In 1850, London crossed the million mark, then Paris. By the beginning of the 20th century. there were already 12 “millionaire” cities in the world (including two in Russia). The growth of large cities proceeded at an ever faster pace. And again, as the most formidable manifestation of the disharmony between man and nature, outbreaks of epidemics of dysentery, cholera, and typhoid fever began one after another. The rivers in the cities were terribly polluted. The Thames in London began to be called the "black river". Fetid streams and ponds in other large cities became sources of gastrointestinal epidemics. Thus, in 1837, in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, a tenth of the population fell ill with typhoid fever and approximately a third of patients died. From 1817 to 1926, six cholera pandemics were recorded in Europe. In Russia, in 1848 alone, about 700 thousand people died from cholera. However, over time, thanks to the achievements of science and technology, advances in biology and medicine, and the development of water supply and sewerage systems, the epidemiological danger began to weaken significantly. We can say that at that stage the environmental crisis of large cities was overcome. Of course, such overcoming each time cost colossal efforts and sacrifices, but the collective intelligence, perseverance and ingenuity of people always turned out to be stronger than the crisis situations they themselves created.

Scientific and technical achievements based on outstanding natural scientific discoveries of the 20th century. contributed to the rapid development of productive forces. This is not only the enormous successes of nuclear physics, molecular biology, chemistry, and space exploration, but also the rapid, continuous growth in the number of large cities and urban population. The volume of industrial production has increased hundreds and thousands of times, the energy supply of humanity has increased more than 1000 times, the speed of movement has increased by 400 times, the speed of information transfer has increased by millions of times, etc. Such active human activity, of course, does not leave its mark on nature, since resources are drawn directly from the biosphere.

And this is only one side of the environmental problems of a big city. Another is that in addition to the consumption of natural resources and energy drawn from vast spaces, a modern city with a million people produces a huge amount of waste. Such a city annually emits into the atmosphere at least 10-11 million tons of water vapor, 1.5 - 2 million tons of dust, 1.5 million tons of carbon monoxide, 0.25 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 0.3 million tons of nitrogen oxides and a large the amount of other pollution that is not indifferent to human health and the environment. In terms of the scale of its impact on the atmosphere, a modern city can be compared to a volcano.

What are the features of the current environmental problems of large cities? First of all, there are numerous sources of impact on the environment and their scale. Industry and transport - and these are hundreds of large enterprises, hundreds of thousands or even millions of vehicles - are the main culprits of pollution of the urban environment. The nature of waste has also changed in our time. Previously, almost all waste was of natural origin (bones, wool, natural fabrics, wood, paper, manure, etc.), and they were easily included in the cycle of nature. Nowadays, a significant part of the waste is synthetic substances. Their transformation in natural conditions occurs extremely slowly.

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Environmental problems of cities It is often believed that the environmental condition of cities has noticeably deteriorated in recent decades as a result of the rapid development of industrial production. But this is a fallacy. Environmental problems of cities arose along with their birth. The cities of the ancient world were characterized by a very crowded population. For example, in Alexandria the population density in the I-II centuries. reached 760 people, in Rome - 1,500 people per 1 hectare (for comparison, let’s say that in the center of modern New York no more than 1 thousand people live per 1 hectare). The width of streets in Rome did not exceed 1.5-4 m, in Babylon - 1.5-3 m. The sanitary improvement of cities was at an extremely low level. All this led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics, pandemics, in which diseases covered the entire country, or even several neighboring countries. The first recorded plague pandemic (known in literature as the “Plague of Justinian”) occurred in the 6th century. in the Eastern Roman Empire and covered many countries of the world. Over 50 years, the plague claimed about 100 million human lives. Now it is difficult to even imagine how ancient cities with their population of many thousands could manage without public transport, without street lighting, without sewerage and other elements of urban amenities. And, probably, it is no coincidence that it was at that time that many philosophers began to have doubts about the advisability of the existence of large cities. Aristotle, Plato, Hippodamus of Miletus, and later Vitruvius repeatedly came out with treatises in which issues of the optimal size of settlements and their structure, problems of planning, construction art, architecture, and even the relationship with the natural environment were considered. Medieval cities were already significantly inferior in size to their classical counterparts and rarely numbered more than several tens of thousands of inhabitants. So, in the 14th century. the population of the largest European cities - London and Paris - was 100 and 30 thousand inhabitants, respectively. However, urban environmental problems have not become less acute. Epidemics continued to be the main scourge. The second plague pandemic, the Black Death, broke out in the 14th century. and carried away almost a third of Europe's population. With the development of industry, rapidly growing capitalist cities quickly surpassed their predecessors in population. In 1850, London crossed the million mark, then Paris. By the beginning of the 20th century. there were already 12 “millionaire” cities in the world (including two in Russia). The growth of large cities proceeded at an ever faster pace. And again, as the most formidable manifestation of the disharmony between man and nature, outbreaks of epidemics of dysentery, cholera, and typhoid fever began one after another. The rivers in the cities were terribly polluted. The Thames in London began to be called the “black river”. Fetid streams and ponds in other large cities became sources of gastrointestinal epidemics. Thus, in 1837, in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, a tenth of the population fell ill with typhoid fever and approximately a third of patients died. From 1817 to 1926, six cholera pandemics were recorded in Europe. In Russia, in 1848 alone, about 700 thousand people died from cholera. However, over time, thanks to the achievements of science and technology, advances in biology and medicine, and the development of water supply and sewerage systems, the epidemiological danger began to weaken significantly. We can say that at that stage the environmental crisis of large cities was overcome. Of course, such overcoming each time cost enormous efforts and sacrifices, but the collective intelligence, perseverance and ingenuity of people always turned out to be stronger than the crisis situations they themselves created. Scientific and technological achievements based on outstanding natural scientific discoveries of the 20th century. contributed to the rapid development of productive forces. This is not only the enormous successes of nuclear physics, molecular biology, chemistry, and space exploration, but also the rapid, continuous growth in the number of large cities and urban population. The volume of industrial production has increased hundreds and thousands of times, the power supply of humanity has increased more than 1000 times, the speed of movement has increased by 400 times, the speed of information transfer has increased by millions of times, etc. Such active human activity, of course, does not pass without a trace on nature , since resources are drawn directly from the biosphere. And this is only one side of the environmental problems of a big city. Another is that in addition to the consumption of natural resources and energy drawn from vast spaces, a modern city with a million people produces a huge amount of waste. Such a city annually emits into the atmosphere at least 10-11 million tons of water vapor, 1.5-2 million tons of dust, 1.5 million tons of carbon monoxide, 0.25 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 0.3 million tons of nitrogen oxides and a large the amount of other pollution that is not indifferent to human health and the environment. In terms of the scale of its impact on the atmosphere, a modern city can be compared to a volcano. What are the features of the current environmental problems of large cities? First of all, there are numerous sources of impact on the environment and their scale. Industry and transport - and these are hundreds of large enterprises, hundreds of thousands or even millions of vehicles - are the main culprits of pollution of the urban environment. The nature of waste has also changed in our time. Previously, almost all waste was of natural origin (bones, wool, natural fabrics, wood, paper, manure, etc.), and they were easily included in the cycle of nature. Nowadays, a significant part of the waste is synthetic substances. Their transformation under natural conditions occurs extremely slowly. One of the environmental problems is associated with the intensive growth of non-traditional “pollution”, which has a wave nature. The electromagnetic fields of high voltage power lines, radio broadcasting and television stations, as well as a large number of electric motors are increasing. The overall level of acoustic noise increases (due to high transport speeds, due to the operation of various mechanisms and machines). Ultraviolet radiation, on the contrary, decreases (due to air pollution). Energy costs per unit area increase, and, consequently, heat transfer and thermal pollution increase. Under the influence of the huge masses of multi-storey buildings, the properties of the geological rocks on which the city stands are changing. The consequences of such phenomena for people and the environment have not yet been sufficiently studied. But they are no less dangerous than pollution of water and air basins and soil and vegetation cover. For residents of large cities, all this together results in a great overstrain of the nervous system. City dwellers get tired quickly, are susceptible to various diseases and neuroses, and suffer from increased irritability. Chronically poor health of a significant part of urban residents in some Western countries is considered a specific disease. It was called "urbanite". Motor transport and environment In many large cities, such as Berlin, Mexico City, Tokyo, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, air pollution from automobile exhaust and dust accounts, according to various estimates, from 80 to 95% of all other pollution. Smoke emitted by factory chimneys, fumes from chemical industries and all other waste from the activities of a large city make up approximately 7% of the total mass of pollution. Car exhaust in cities is especially dangerous because it pollutes the air mainly at the level of human growth. And people are forced to breathe polluted air. A person consumes 12 m 3 of air per day, a car - a thousand times more. For example, in Moscow, road transport absorbs 50 times more oxygen than the entire population of the city. In calm weather and low atmospheric pressure on busy highways, the oxygen content in the air often decreases to a value close to critical, at which people begin to suffocate and faint. Not only the lack of oxygen affects, but also harmful substances from car exhaust. This is especially dangerous for children and people with poor health. Cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases are worsening, and viral epidemics are developing. People often do not even suspect that this is due to poisoning from automobile gases. The number of cars in cities and on highways is increasing from year to year. Ecologists believe that where their number exceeds one thousand per km 2, the habitat can be considered destroyed. The number of cars is taken in terms of passenger cars. Heavy transport vehicles running on oil fuel especially pollute the air, destroy road surfaces, destroy green spaces along roads, and poison reservoirs and surface waters. In addition, they emit such a huge amount of gas that in Europe and the European part of Russia it exceeds the mass of evaporated water from all reservoirs and rivers. As a result, cloudiness becomes more frequent and the number of sunny days decreases. Gray, sunless days, unheated soil, constantly high air humidity - all this contributes to the growth of various diseases and a decrease in agricultural yields. More than 3 billion tons of oil are produced annually in the world. They are mined with hard work, at enormous costs, and with great environmental damage to nature. A significant part of it (about 2 billion) is spent on gasoline and diesel vehicles. The average efficiency of a car engine is only 23% (for gasoline engines - 20, for diesel engines - 35%). This means that more than half of the oil is burned in vain, used to heat and pollute the atmosphere. But this is not all the losses. The main indicator is not engine efficiency, but vehicle load factor. Unfortunately, road transport is used extremely inefficiently. A smartly built vehicle must be able to carry more than its own weight, which is where its efficiency lies. In practice, only bicycles and light motorcycles meet this requirement; other vehicles basically carry themselves. It turns out that the efficiency of road transport is no more than 3-4%. A huge amount of petroleum fuel is burned, and energy is spent extremely irrationally. For example, one KamAZ vehicle consumes so much energy that it would be enough to heat 50 apartments in winter. For many centuries, the main form of transport for humans was the horse. Energy in 1 liter. With. (this is an average of 736 W), added to a person’s own power, allows him to move quickly enough and perform almost any necessary work. The boom in the automotive industry took us to power levels of 100, 200, 400 hp. pp., and now it is extremely difficult to return to the quite sufficient norm - 1 liter. pp., in which it would not be so difficult to ensure the ecological purity of the environment. How to solve the problem of creating efficient transport? Converting vehicles to gas fuel, switching to electric vehicles, installing a special absorber of harmful combustion products on each car and burning them in the muffler - all this is a search for a way out of the impasse in which not only Russia, but all of Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico find themselves. Brazil, Argentina, Japan, China. Unfortunately, none of these paths leads to a complete solution to the problem. With any of them, there is excessive energy consumption, emissions of steam, carbon dioxide and much more. Obviously, a well-balanced set of measures is needed. And their mandatory implementation should be based on clear, strict laws, among which may be, for example, the following: a ban on the production of cars that consume more than 1-2 liters of fuel per ton of vehicle weight over a mileage of 100 km (single exceptions are possible); taking into account that a passenger car most often carries one or two people, it is advisable to produce more two-seater cars. The amount of tax on transport (car, tractor, trailer, etc.) should be determined by the amount of fuel consumed. This will make it possible to reconcile the economic feasibility of transporting goods by road with the increasing level of environmental pollution. Whoever pollutes our environment more is obliged to pay more tax to society. One of the ways to reduce harmful automobile emissions is the use of new types of automobile fuel: gas, methanol, methyl alcohol or a mixture of it with gasoline - gasohol. For example, all public transport in Stockholm has been running on methanol for several years. The impact of automobile exhaust gases on the atmosphere is significantly reduced by ordinary green spaces. An analysis of the air in adjacent sections of the same highway shows that there are fewer pollutants where there is an island of greenery, at least a few trees or shrubs. The volume of toxic substances in the air directly depends on the speed of traffic on city streets. The more traffic jams, the thicker the exhaust. In this regard, it is necessary to continuously improve the city’s road transport system to create optimal traffic conditions.

Goals, objectives, epigraph…………….………………………. ……………....2

Relevance…………………………………………… .…………..…2

Introduction…………………………………………………….… …………..3

Nature and man in Ancient Rome……………………….……………….4

Nature and man in Ancient Greece…………………….…………….5

Nature and man in Ancient China…………….………………………6

Nature and man in Ancient Egypt……………….………………….……7

Conclusion………………………………………….…… …………….8

List of references……………………………….…….10

Appendix……………………………………………………… ……..….11

Epigraph: "...More than children about their mother,

citizens should take care of

native land, because she is a goddess -

breadwinner of mortal creatures..."

Project goals: 1. Expand knowledge about the ecology of the Ancient World;
2. Draw conclusions about how the ecology has changed from ancient times to our time

Objectives: 1. study the scientific literature on this issue;

2.protect the project.
Relevance: Many students have no idea about the ecology of the Ancient world, as well as how ancient people found solutions to certain environmental problems.

Introduction

Man is closely connected with the environment by origin, material and spiritual needs. The scale and forms of these connections have steadily grown from the local use of individual natural resources to the almost complete involvement of the resource potential of the planet in the life support of a modern industrialized society.
With the emergence of human civilization, a new factor appeared that influenced the state of the biosphere. It has achieved enormous power in the current century, especially in recent decades. In terms of the scale of their impact on nature, 6 billion of our contemporaries are equal to approximately 60 billion people of the Stone Age, and the amount of energy released by humans may soon become comparable to the energy received by the Earth from the Sun. Man, developing production, remakes nature, adapts it to his needs, and the higher the level of development of production, the more advanced the equipment and technology, the greater the degree of use of the forces of nature and environmental pollution.
Even in Ancient Rome and Athens, the Romans noted the pollution of the waters of the Tiber, and the Athenians noted the pollution of the waters of the Athenian port of Piraeus, which received ships from all over the then ecumene, i.e. territory of the globe inhabited by humans.
Roman settlers in the provinces of Africa complained about the depletion of land due to soil erosion. For many centuries, artificial, i.e. anthropogenic sources of environmental pollution did not have a noticeable impact on environmental processes. The most developed industries in those days were the production of metals, glass, soap, pottery, paints, bread, wine, etc. Compounds such as oxides of carbon, sulfur and nitrogen, vapors of metals, especially mercury, were released into the atmosphere; waste from dyeing and food production was released into water bodies.

Nature and man in Ancient Rome

It all started with a small settlement in Latium, and this settlement of Roma, Rome, extended its power not only to the lands of its neighbors, in Italy, but also to the surrounding vast countries. Even then, in ancient times, contemporaries were looking for an explanation for these impressive achievements: historians and poets saw their reasons mainly in the strength of Roman weapons, in the heroism of the Romans, but they also paid attention and took into account the important role of the geographical conditions of this region, especially the lowlands of Northern Italy , owed his bountiful harvests and wealth.
The climate and temperature of the country are distinguished by great diversity, which causes the greatest changes... in the animal and plant world and in general in everything that is useful for supporting life... Italy also has the following advantage: since the Apennine Mountains stretch along the entire length and leave plains on both sides and fertile hills.
There is not a single part of the country that does not enjoy the riches of the mountainous and lowland areas. To this should be added many large rivers and lakes, and moreover, in many places there are also springs of hot and cold water, created by nature itself for health, and especially an abundance of all kinds of mines.
Without human effort, all the benefits of Italy's geographical position would have remained unrealized and Rome would not have been able to achieve that power and glory. It was believed that the Greeks, when founding cities, achieved their goals with particular success, striving for beauty, inaccessibility, the presence of fertile soil and harbors, while the Romans took care of what the Greeks did not pay attention to: the construction of roads, water pipelines, sewers, through which the city sewage can be dumped into the Tiber. They built roads throughout the country, tearing down hills, and building embankments in hollows, so that their carts could take the cargo of merchant ships.
The water pipelines supply such a huge amount of water that real rivers flow through the city and through the sewers. It was the Romans, according to geographers, who, having owned Italy, managed to turn it into a stronghold of their dominion over the whole world. Mastering nature and adapting its elements to his own needs, ancient man was tirelessly engaged in land reclamation.
In some places for centuries he struggled with excess groundwater, in others, feeling a lack of moisture, he had to “correct” the environment with his own mind and hands - to supply dry areas with water.
Water for quenching thirst, for housekeeping, for treatment - was not always an easily accessible gift of nature or the gods, a source of free benefit.
Initially these were long-term water reservoirs or wells. The choice of one or another device for supplying people with water depended on local geographical conditions.
Large floodplains, places that are flooded during floods, are adjacent to areas where only rainwater is used for irrigation. Therefore, sustainable water supply was a very difficult problem. However, among the most ancient forms of accumulation and collection of water are the construction of grottoes and the installation of sources protected from pollution. The underground springs arranged in this way resembled wells.
Identifying a water source and providing access to it meant solving only half the problem. No less important was the problem of transportation and delivery of water to consumers. Sometimes they brought a large supply of water in large jugs at once.
They also created fenced pools with depressions, from which it was easy to draw water.

Nature and man in Ancient Greece
The devastation that man causes in nature attracted the attention of Greek rulers already at the beginning of the 6th century. BC. Legislator Solon proposed banning the cultivation of steep slopes to prevent soil erosion; Peisistratus encouraged those peasants who planted olive trees, resisting the deforestation of the area and the depletion of pastures.

Two hundred years later, Plato wrote about the destruction inflicted on the Attic land: “And now, as happens with small islands, only the skeleton of a body exhausted by illness remained, compared to its previous state, when all the soft and fat earth was washed away - and only one skeleton is still before us ... Among our mountains there are those that now only raise bees...

There were also many tall trees from among those grown by the hand of man... and vast pastures were prepared for livestock, for the waters poured out every year from Zeus did not perish, as now, flowing from the bare land into the sea, but were absorbed in abundance into the soil, seeped from above into the voids of the earth and were stored in clay beds, and therefore there was no shortage of sources of streams and rivers everywhere. The sacred remains of former springs that still exist testify that our present story about this country is true” (Plato. Critias).

From an environmental perspective, “the transition to agriculture was the most important milestone in human history.” The result was the first form of agricultural environment - the cultivated countryside. In this process, Europe followed the path laid out in Southwest Asia and developed parallel to China and Central America (Mesoamerica). Our subcontinent was not spared all the consequences of such development - a constant surplus of food - and, therefore, the potential for demographic growth; organized, hierarchical society; increased coercion in the economy and in matters of war; the emergence of cities, organized trade and literate culture - and environmental disasters.

The main thing is that special ideas have developed about the relationship of humanity to Nature

Nature and man in Ancient China
The problem of man in ancient Chinese philosophy arises together with philosophy and at each stage of the development of ancient Chinese society is solved as a problem of the development of the relationship of man to man and man to nature. She attaches particular importance to determining the place and functions of man in the world and the criteria for knowing oneself and nature in historical interrelation.
In the ancient Chinese philosophical worldview, mainly 3 trends emerged in solving the human problem:
1. Finding ways to build the right relationship between nature and man as an active subject, when spiritual and behavioral patterns of life are embodied in the chosen ideal of man. Society and nature are presented as one huge house-family and space-state, living according to the law of natural-human “reciprocity” Ren, “justice-duty” Yi, “respect” and “love” Xiao and Ci, elders and younger, bonded in unity by “ritual-etiquette” Lee.
2. Solving the problem of man with an orientation toward steadily moving patterns of nature, when the ideal of a social subject is a man of natural “nature” Zi Zhan (shen zhen “sage-man” in Taoism). Human life is built in harmony with the living rhythms of nature. Man is understood as an eternal spiritual-physical entity living according to the laws of Tao-Te.
3. The third way to solve the problem combines the capabilities of the first and second. Human behavior is the harmonization of natural and social rhythms, the material and spiritual balancing of space and nature. The law of life is the natural human harmony of feelings and thoughts.
Early Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism during the period of “chaos of the Celestial Empire” set the same task: to find ways to establish harmony between nature and man. In Confucianism, interest falls on the self-conscious person who observes the ritual social and natural tradition and follows the precepts of the “preborn” in behavior and history. Consciousness here moves from nature to man, from the “constancy” of the past fixed in natural rhythms to the present. In Taoism, searching interest is directed to nature, consciousness moves from man to nature. The human subject here trusts nature with body and soul and identifies himself with it. In legalism, the center of gravity falls on the subject who organizes the life of society and nature according to the law of the Fa, consciousness is concentrated in the center of the collision of natural and human norms of life. In these indicated directions, ancient Chinese philosophy, the anthropological problem is closely related to nature, on whose body all human meanings of life are objectified. Moreover, with the general spiritualization and humanization of nature, the latter is perceived as a subject and direct participant in history. There are deep economic rationales associated with this - the almost complete dependence of the Chinese agricultural community on nature. As a result, in the minds of the ancient Chinese, nature is higher than man.
In addition, the original theoretical principles of Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism go back to the time of direct identification of man with a natural thing (tribal society), which also left its mark on the philosophical style of thinking. As a result, teachings about man in the ancient Chinese worldview take the form of teachings about nature. Consequently, when considering the problem of man in ancient Chinese philosophy, it is necessary to turn to the teachings about the origin of nature and the types of its structural order.

Nature and man in Ancient Egypt

In ancient Egypt, information about environmental knowledge goes back to sources associated with the life of the remarkable thinker and healer Imhotep (about 2800-2700 BC). In surviving ancient Egyptian papyri dating back to 2500-1500. BC, also presents thoughts of an ecological nature about life, nature and health, about the problems of death, which, according to scientists of our time, are striking in their exclusively scientific accuracy and clarity of presentation in the absence of religious and mystical layers. For several thousand years, Egyptian civilization lived and worked cheerfully, with an increase in vital energy. The source of vitality and such a long prosperity of Egypt lies in the attitude of the Egyptians to the world and its nature, in their concepts of conscience and soul, of life on Earth and the destinies of people in inextricable connection and harmony with the environment.

Conclusion

During the project, I learned a lot about the ecology of Ancient civilizations, and also expanded my knowledge of how certain environmental problems of those times were solved.

Different times have their own problems. Now there are many more of them and they are several times larger.
Even ancient philosophers wrote about how important it is to protect nature, we should not forget this even now.

Bibliography

1. Vinnichuk L. “People, customs and customs of Ancient Greece and Rome” Trans. from Polish VC.

2. Ronina. – M.: Higher. school 1988 – 496 p.

3.Internet

Application

Maps of ancient civilizations

Ancient Rome

Ancient Greece

Ancient China

Today there are approximately 15 million human settlements on Earth. All of them are in complex interaction with nature. The strength and direction of such interaction in different historical eras changed depending on the development of certain forms of settlement, the growth rate of cities, their technical equipment and many other factors. Let us dwell in more detail on the most important issues for urban ecology in the development of cities and urban systems.

Cities of the ancient world and the Middle Ages

The first settlements arose on Earth probably 10-12 thousand years ago, when agriculture gradually began to turn into one of the most important human occupations. These settlements numbered 100-150 people and were quite far from each other. Within a radius of approximately 3-4 km, the natural landscape experienced a strong change - the natural cover gradually turned into agrocenoses (fields are cultivated, vegetable gardens, etc.). The area of cultivated plots was small; The immediate surroundings of the village were a mosaic of transformed and untreated landscape areas that had high ecological potential. Within a radius of 10-15 km, the landscape was still almost untouched by people, who used it as hunting grounds and a natural storehouse. In general, Neolithic man, due to his small numbers and low pressure on nature, fit well into the biotic cycle.

Cities arose in the 6th-5th millennium BC. as a result of an increasingly strong territorial division of labor, the displacement of handicrafts from agriculture and trade. The heyday of the slave system was also the heyday of the cities of the ancient world. For example, Babylon (Assyria), Memphis (Egypt) each had 80 thousand inhabitants, Athens during the reign of Pericles - 300 thousand, Carthage - 600 thousand, and Rome during the reign of Augustus Octavian - 1 million inhabitants. Ancient cities, with a few exceptions, were characterized by crowded population, poor amenities, and high building density, which exceeded the population density levels in modern cities.

Cities were closely connected with agriculture, and many peasants lived in them. Pressure on nature around the city was growing. Landscapes transformed from mosaic to monoculture; Soil erosion became common. Ancient cities, as the focus of cultural, social, trade and other spheres of life, also became environmental pests of the surrounding area. They consumed water, food and other resources from a large area without giving anything in return.

The level of transport services and sanitary amenities in the cities of the ancient world was extremely low. For example, the width of streets in Rome did not exceed 4 m, in Babylon - 3 m. According to Julius Caesar, a special law was approved that limited the time for the movement of various types of carriages along the city streets. Due to the crowded structures (poor conditions for changing stagnant air flows over damp lowlands), outbreaks of epidemics were not uncommon. The first plague epidemic in the 6th millennium BC. e. in the Eastern Roman Empire, covered many countries of the world and claimed 100 million human lives, approximately 1/3 of the total population of the Earth.

Already in those ancient times, many philosophers and scientists had doubts about the appropriateness of the social and functional structure of their contemporary cities.

Even in the ancient epic of Gilgamesh, in the description of M. V ruka (PI thousand BC), the ratio of built-up and unbuilt areas within the city walls is given. Later, many Greek thinkers - Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Vitruvius and others - came out with treatises that addressed issues of the optimal size of settlements, public assessment of hygiene, city planning and other problems of construction art and architecture.

The concept of Greek urban planning can be imagined according to the descriptions of Plato (V-IV millennium BC), who believed that ideally the city should be planned in such a way that each section has the shortest exit from the city, and all residents should have houses both in the city and outside it. Hippocrates (5th century AD) substantiated the principles of choosing a site for building a city, taking into account the prevailing winds and their influence on the microclimate and health of citizens.

Byzantine urban planning legislation, adopted in the form of the “Law of the City” as part of the “Measure of the Righteous” of the late 10th century and the leaders of the books (“Helmsmen’s Books”) of the 12th century, determined the spatial structure of the city, taking into account its relationships with the surrounding area.

In the Middle Ages, along with feudalism, which replaced the slave system, a new type of city arose - a fortified city, surrounded by powerful defensive structures. Medieval cities were smaller in size than the settlements of the ancient world and rarely numbered more than a few tens of thousands of people. The number of the largest of them - London and Paris - reached in the 14th century. 100 and 30 thousand inhabitants respectively.

At the same time, their hygiene problems were no less acute, and epidemics remained the main threat to residents. The second plague pandemic, which broke out in the 14th century, killed approximately a third of Europe's population.

The process of city formation can be divided into three stages.

Stage I lasted until the 16th-17th centuries. Mainly local sources of food and water, energy from wind and water mills, horses and other domestic animals were used, and manual labor predominated in production. The waste that entered the environment was mainly waste products of people and domestic animals. The environmental problems of ancient cities were associated with the contamination of water supplies by this waste and, as a consequence, periodic outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Stage II coincided with the development of land and water transport, roads, and the opening of possibilities for using thermal energy for transport and production purposes.

And stage II (began in the 19th century) is associated with the industrial revolution and was marked by a sharp increase in the impact on the natural environment.

By 1400. The first urbanized country in the modern sense was Great Britain.

The Renaissance was marked by a significant development of urban planning ideas, the emergence, first of all, of urban utopias of “ideal cities” by I. Campanella, T. More, Philaret and other authors. The proposed schematism of these cities, their emphasized geometricity, is a kind of protest against the chaotically disordered cities of the Middle Ages.

The accelerated pace of urbanization at the present stage is associated with a further expansion of the energy needs of society, the emergence and development of new types of transport, an increase in the system of public services, a high level of living comfort, and intellectual communication.