Going over my quota again, so this will be it from me for today. However,
1) I do think that it is meaningful to speak of an urban system as an ecosystem. The latter term is a neutral scientific term that describes a spatial region in which energy drives the cycling of biogeochemicals. That such an ecosystem may be "out of balance" or "out of harmony" does not make it something other than an ecosystem. It makes it a dysfunctional ecosystem.
2) Louis P. is right that there is a link between class-structured society and urban systems that are disconnected fundamentally from their immediate hinterlands (in contrast to primitive "open" agricultural villages). But the link runs much deeper and further than capitalist Manchester. Indeed, the origin of such a disjuncture and such class structures goes to the "foundation of civilization" itself, the rise of distinct cities around 5,000 years ago. These were ruled by god-kings in agrohydraulic states with ruling elites. They depended on long distance trade to get tin and copper, this being the bronze age. The countryside was subordinated and exploited politically and economically. A good source on this from a Marxist perspective is V. Gordon Childe's _What Happened in History_, 1942, Hammondsworth, an oldy but goody. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 12 May 1998 14:26:37 -0400 Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> wrote:
> Laurie Daugherty wrote:
> >An ecology can be in or out of balance, stressed or not, in crisis or in
> >harmony. To see a city as an ecosystem or as a component in a larger
> >ecosystem is to look at the relationships and begin to find ways to
> >resolve crises and restore balance. What Cronon did was to show the
> >expansion of the hinterland to which Chicago was related and to expose
> >the interdependencies, the supply and distribution chains, to which it
> >was linked.
>
> On page 186, Harvey says that there is nothing _unnatural_ about New York
> City. If this is the case, then nothing is unnatural. The term becomes
> meaningless. Mexico City is not unnatural. Brasilia is not unnatural, etc.
> The problem is that by definition all cities are _out of balance_. The
> reason for this should be obvious. They were created as an instrument for
> the accumulation of capital. Engels study of Manchester in "Conditions of
> the Working Class in England" is a worth considering, since it was the
> prototype for all modern European cities. How did it become populated? What
> would prompt a formerly self-provisioning farmer to take a job making shoes
> that required him to be in a factory for 11 hours a day? A Scottish farmer
> could produce a decent pair of shoes at home in 1/2 hour in the 18th
> century. And for most of the 18th century, it took wage-earners 2 days of
> work to go out and buy a pair. The modern capitalist city is a product of
> duress. Farmers literally had a gun put to their head to make them leave
> their land. Now that the cities have been built, wage earners can buy goods
> with wages that it took less time to earn than if they produced the goods
> themselves. But the other set of problems have not been eliminated and
> can't be eliminated. The only way to feed the urban working-class in the
> present system is through industrial farming. Such farming methods are
> hazardous to our health. A recent book "Living Downstream" ties the
> epidemic of cancer to the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on
> large farms. The food we eat is either larded with deadly bacteria or lacks
> nutritional value. The raw sewage we dump into the water supplies is taxing
> the limits of the system. If all this is supposed to be "natural", then god
> help us.
>
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu