Urban environment protection
Urban environment protection
Definition:
Urban environment protection is the preservation of a healthy as well as desirable urban environment for current and future generations, always keeping the human needs in the focus of observation.
Exemplification:
Urban protection of the environment is a special form of general environment protection, that focusses on the specific requirements of cities and other socioeconomic clusters and aggregations .The protection, preservation and improvement of the living environment are the main goals of urban environment protection.
Urban environment protection is therefore an integral and basic element of modern societies. As the majority of humans lives in urban areas and aggregations, the city - or more general terms the settlement – became the main social environment for most individuals. The conservation of nature is part of urban environment protection, as it preserves a functioning ecosystem and recognizes the citizens as an element in these systems. Urban environment protection is a direct result of the global trend of urbanization and a requirement to enable and support this trend with its related issues and challenges. The urban nature preservation is based on the notion of environment which has been established by the zoologist and biologist Jakob von Uexküll in the 19th century. Uxeküll defined environment as the surrounding of an individual being, which affects its living conditions. Therefore we can differentiate between environment and general periphery as this is only perceived as an object but has no further implications or effects onto the individual.
Since 12,000 years humans have chosen to settle in larger groups and formed the first villages and aggregations of humans. The city is therefore a natural habitat of homo sapiens. Since the dawn of this millennium, the trend of urbanization has accelerated and there are no indicators that this trend comes to a halt soon.
The urban environment is a very specific form of environment with its own climate and hygienic risk factors. Due to this, every kind of settlement - small or large - requires different measures of protection and restrictions compared to untouched nature, in which rotting animal corpses, diverse vegetation and swampy ponds are ordinary elements of the ecosystem. In cities, these examples would be hazardous risks to the human health.
Examples for urban environment protection:
- Waste water and sewage processing
- Garbage removal
- Infrastructure cleaning and maintenance
- Noise mitigation at streets and other sources of sounds
- Parks and other recreation zones
- Preventing emissions (noise, dust, light etc.)