Michael Perelman wrote: >While it is true that even our whole planet is not a self-contained system >and so might not be a true ecosystem, the idea of an ecosystem is that it is >a place that has a certain degree of coherence. My skin or my gut forms an >ecosystem for various microorganisms. A rain forest contains a certain type >of environment. In general, we think of an ecosystem as being more or less >self-contained. In the sense, my refrigerator is not an ecosystem, since it >depends upon a flow of food from an outside source. Similarly, I do not >think of the city as an ecosystem, although we can find any number of >ecosystems within a city. I believe that the key to unraveling this question is in the use value/exchange value dichotomy. Before the introduction of large-scale commodity production, cities were much more woven into their natural environment. It is interesting to note--as Ellen Wood does in her article in the MR issue on agriculture--that it was only England that contained a modern capitalist city in the 1500 and 1600s. France had much smaller cities and were much more knitted into the fabric of the countryside. London, of course, provides the model for the modern urban center. France, on the other hand, as George Comninel points out, did not really have an urban bourgeoisie. There was no industrial class that was fighting to burst through the fetters of feudal production. In reality, the landed gentry and the untitled landowners cooperated to reshape the French state and form the basis of modern political parties, divided along Liberal and Conservative line. Cities organized around the production of use-values can actually be quite large, as Peking, the Aztec's Tenochtitlán and Timbuktu illustrate. Such cities are actually much more "civilized" in more ways than the ones that follow them on Engels evolutionary ladder. Tenochtitlán had 400,000 inhabitants in the 1500s, which was larger than any European city, except London perhaps. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, "Tenochtitlán ... was originally located on two small islands in Lake Texcoco; but it gradually spread into the surrounding lake by a process, first of chinampa construction, then of consolidation. It was connected to the mainland by several causeway dikes that terminated in smaller lakeside urban communities. The lake around the city was also partly covered with chinampas with numerous rural settlements. Together, the complex of settlements--the city, the chinampa villages, and the settlements along the lakeshore plain--must have appeared from the air as one gigantic settlement." An important part of the Aztec city was its gardens.The conquistadores reported elaborate gardens with terraced hills, groves, fountains, and ornamental ponds that were essentially royal pleasure grounds, reflecting a need for private solace and public display not unlike contemporary gardens in the West. Compare this with modern Mexico City, which I suspect no Mexican version of William Cronon will ever be inspired to write love poems for. ====== Houston Chronicle, Feb. 28, 1998 MEXICO CITY - If Houstonians are disgusted with the smoky haze that has triggered statewide health alerts for several days now, imagine how the residents of Mexico City feel. They must put up with even worse air pollution almost every day. The 20 million residents of the city, created on the site of the ancient Aztec capital, are subjected to near fatal doses of pollutants on a daily basis, said Homero Aridjis, president of Mexico's foremost ecology organization, the Group of 100. "People here are becoming mutants," he said. "Everyone here is sick from respiratory ailments right now. Millions of people." More than 4,000 Mexico City residents die each year from diseases related to the pollution, said Rafael Pedrero Nieto, an investigator who studies the effects of the pollution. Mexico City's Health Minister once said that living in the city cuts an average of three years from the expected lifespan of each resident. To compare the two cities, look at their levels of ozone, a respiratory irritant formed by the reaction of gases from industrial plants, cars and other sources to sunlight. Houston, which ranks second to Los Angeles in the United States in terms of ozone pollution, has recorded five days since Jan. 1 when ozone exceeded established norms. Already this year, ozone levels in Mexico City have exceeded those same norms on 128 days, according to figures from the capital's Air Monitoring Network. The World Health Organization recommends that nobody be subjected more than one hour a year to the norm, or 0.12 parts per million of particles in the air. For people in Mexico City the figure is closer to 1,500 hours, Aridjis said. Because Mexico City lies in a valley surrounded by hills, winds that would sweep the pollutants away rarely blow through. Instead, contaminants are trapped in the valley, especially during the winter when cold air puts a lid on the pollutants that would otherwise rise from the warmer city streets. Experts seem at a loss as to what to do. Some engineers have suggested cutting great chunks out of the surrounding mountains to let the air in, while others have proposed building huge fans to blow the smog away. Cleaner gasoline and stricter emission controls for cars and trucks have helped to clean the air, but the problem persists. "The nation faces a double catastrophe," said an editorial in the La Jornada newspaper. "The climatological and environmental conditions and the lack of infrastructure, resources and adequate governmental decisions." Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
