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Environmental Problems in the City

According to Dr. Josef Leitmann in "Sustaining Cities: Environmental Planning and Management in Urban Design," more than half the world's population lives in cities. With the transition of the populace base to living in cities, many problems arise. Sanitation is perhaps the most pressing problem to guard against disease and death. Many environmental problems arise when large numbers of people inhabit a small area.

  1. Contamination of Natural Resources

    • In the past, the contamination of natural resources was not of as great a concern. Post-industrial revolution however, the water and air suffered under the onslaught of pollution produced by the factories as waste products. The water in rivers and lakes became undrinkable and the air filled with toxic gases. Third world countries today live in cities where the water is so bad it is dangerous to drink and finding safe water is difficult. Leitmann says that the degradation of the environment in cities has reached a level at which more than 1.1 billion people breathe air that is not healthy, 420 million don't have adequate sanitation and 220 million have no access to clean drinking water.

    Sanitation and Garbage Disposal

    • Most people don't think about garbage and the problems presented in disposing of it. To cite an example of the magnitude of the problem, New York City produced 23,600 metric tons of waste and garbage every day as of 1995. This waste must be disposed of somewhere, either in landfills or incinerators. The incinerators generate more air pollution and the landfills only hold a certain amount of waste. Once the landfills are full, where do we dump all the garbage generated in the following days, weeks and years? The garbage dumped in landfills not only allows toxic chemicals to leach into the groundwater but it also uses up land that could be used to grow food or house some of the homeless.

    Destruction and Depletion of Renewable Resources

    • The pollution brought about by the cities affects the land surrounding the city, depleting it of trees and other natural resources. Coastal fishing grounds, rivers and inland lakes suffer from the pollution generated by the city and the fishing industry dries up. People lose their jobs and ability to feed much of the population of the city. The expansion of cities encroaches upon the habitat of many animals and serves to limit the biodiversity in the regions around the city. The destruction of entire ecosystems is possible due to urban expansion, which causes the loss of many species of wildlife.

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