Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 6 - The Realm of Consequence

  • from Part One - Cities of the Rivers
  • Carl H. Nightingale, State University of New York, Buffalo
  • Book:
    Earthopolis
    Published online:
    10 May 2022
    Print publication:
    09 June 2022, pp 135-154

  • Summary

    Chapter 6 of Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet discusses the “realm of consequence,” the oscillating space occupied by life-destroying impacts of our city-enabled actions and habitats. In addition to forms of destruction generated solely by “endogenous” forces of political violence and war and by “exogenous” natural forces emanating from the Sun and Earth, the chapter explores places where our own city-enabled actions and impacts caused natural destruction, partly accounting for moments when urban worlds and the human population retreated in size. Cities incubated disease more prolifically than villages, resulting in many city-destroying and multi-continental pandemics. Expansions of agriculture to feed cities, the wider use of wood as fuel, and the resulting deforestation also had often city-destroying consequences via soil degradation and rising levels of river-water and silt. Urban industry and food systems, especially rice production, expanded human emissions of smoke and greenhouse gasses to Earth’s atmosphere as a whole for the first time during pre-modern times.