Abstract
This chapter investigates the constraints for urban growth in pre-industrial societies and focuses on transport as an important component in the functioning of socio-ecological systems. It presents a simple formal model based on sociometabolic relations to investigate the relation between the size of an urban centre, its resource needs and the resulting transport requirements. This model allows, in a very stylised way, light to be shed on some of the physical constraints for urban growth in agrarian societies and a better understanding of how transport shapes the relation between cities and their resource-providing hinterland. The model demonstrates that the growth of urban centres depends upon an extension of the territory and rural population to work the land and generate the supplies cities require. The labour force engaged in urban rural transport rises with the size of urban centre and corresponds to 8–15% of the urban labour force. We find clear indications for a scale limit to agrarian empires, and agrarian centres, due to factors associated with the cost of transport (in terms of human labour time and land). Where this scale limit occurs strongly depends upon agricultural productivity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a work that is classic in more than a technical sense, see (Ciccantell and Bunker 1998).
- 2.
For human societies, the preparation (cooking) and sharing of food at a common fireplace is a constitutive feature (see Wrangham 2009).
- 3.
Such considerations are captured by “optimal foraging theories” (Harris 1987); usually, the element of transportation is not elaborated explicitly in these theories.
- 4.
One frequently cited exception from this rule is the controlled use of fire to remove shrubs and trees, thereby increasing the extension of grasslands and the number of herbivores, as well as facilitating the movement of hunters (Lewis 1982).
- 5.
Anyone considering a 9 kg load as small should take into account that female adults usually also carry children, in addition to this load.
- 6.
Beyond the actual movement in space, no further investment is required: no construction of roads, bridges or carriages, and no breeding and feeding of animals.
- 7.
If the size of the new territory is ten times as large as the former (R2π = 10r2π), then the new radius is 3.16 times larger (R = r √10).
- 8.
Lee found !Kung women to walk about 2,400 km a year, which by the above calculation standards would correspond to one and a half hours walking per day (Lee 1980).
- 9.
Assuming an average annual food demand of 500 kg per year, this population density can be sustained with an average food yield of 25 kg/km2(in case of low seasonal variation).
- 10.
Colonisation of natural systemsis a concept used in social ecology that refers to society’s deliberate interventions into natural systems in order to create or maintain a state of the natural system that renders it more useful for society. Colonisation mainly refers to human labour and the information, technologies and skills involved that make labour effective (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 2007; Singh et al. 2010).
- 11.
- 12.
And in part also have to be transported in the other direction, as seed and dung.
- 13.
In arid regions, water may also constitute an important transportation issue. In our present approach, we have implicitly assumed water to be ubiquitously available at any time.
- 14.
Although very plausible in practical terms, we have not considered the case of a multistage hierarchy of urban centres. Such a case, in principle, does not pose any new challenges to our model: transport loads and distances remain the same whether we deal with one large centre or with a hierarchy of intermediate centres. What matters on this level of abstraction is only the number of people (outside agriculture) to be sustained – the size of the required hinterland results from this (see below for more detail).
- 15.
This asymmetric exchange, of course, in the medium term leads to soil depletion in the hinterland: soil nutrients, contained in food and feed, travel to the urban centres, and are there ultimately washed into rivers and the sea, where they may cause pollution through over-fertilisation. This is what – in response to Liebig’s (Liebig 1964; Boyden 1987) insights – (Marx 1976) called “metabolic rift” (see also Foster 1999). For some very large centres of agrarian civilizations (such as, for example, Edo in Japan), this problem was managed by the systematic collection of human (and animal) faeces in cities, transporting them back into rural areas to be used as manure (Takashi 1998). See Billen et al. (2009) on nutrient returns from Paris to its rural hinterland and Krausmann (2013) in this volume on similar considerations for the city of Vienna.
- 16.
The systemic relations in this “black box” are derived from our research on central European rain-fed agriculture (see Table 4.2). They will be quite unlike, say, South East Asian paddy field agriculture. Such relations result from a long-term learning and optimisation process (for ancient Roman agriculture, see for example Carlsen et al. 1994), and we have not yet managed to formalise them on a general level. So we use the parameters from empirical case studies. These parameters would, of course, be different in an agricultural system that does not use animal traction (such as in China or Japan).
- 17.
We had so far no opportunity to calibrate our assumptions empirically. In a discussion with transport technology historians in Dietramszell, Bavaria (organised by the Breuninger Foundation in November 2003), our assumptions survived as plausible (see also Beck 1993; Hitschmann and Hitschmann 1891; Krausmann 2004; Möser 2003).
- 18.
We make no assumptions on how much of this is collected as proprietary income or taxes, and how much is sold on markets. But it is quite obvious that collecting “one tenth” (Zehent) for tithes or taxes is already roughly at the upper limit of what the villages can spare.
- 19.
This assumption is well warranted for our empirical case studies, but this could of course be very different for other agrarian systems.
- 20.
It must be borne in mind that this assumption implies an ideal geography that allows the territory to expand evenly in all directions from the centre into the rest of the world. Geometrically, all territories would be circular with the settlement/urban centre in the middle.
- 21.
By definition, the rural population is fully occupied by agriculture. Practically, of course we may assume that farmers transport some of their produce to markets. But for the bulk goods like corn or flour that make up the overwhelming majority of the mass transported, we may safely assume that some kind of specialised business performs this task.
- 22.
Feed demand for urban transport was calculated on the assumption of an average daily feed intake of 10 kg per draft animal and day. This already includes the feed demand for the first two live years of the horse during which it is not yet used for draft purposes. Fifty percent of the feed demand was assumed to be grain (oats) and converted with the rural biomass calculator into rural hinterland, population and agricultural biomass flows. The remaining 50 % of the feed demand was assumed to be crop residues and grazing and these were not translated into additional hinterland (see Krausmann 2004).
- 23.
See, for example, 30–35 cap/km2in Austria and the UK around 1750 (Krausmann et al. 2013).
- 24.
This whole comparison, in terms of system characteristics, will be calibrated according to the empirical relations we obtained from the analysis of three nineteenth century Austrian villages, as in the calculation on scale 1. In more general terms, we make our model calculations before the background of a typical central European rain-fed agricultural production system dominated by a traditional three-field rotation and rural subsistence grain production. There is a heavy reliance on draft animals for agricultural labour and transportation, and a limited nutrient availability. The territories are inland with no access to sea, hence no coastal shipping is taken into account. For reasons of simplicity, river transport was taken into account for wood. (Beck 1993; Winiwarter 2002; Krausmann 2004, 2008).
- 25.
For the moment, we have ignored construction minerals. Under industrial conditions, construction minerals are of the same order of magnitude (or more) than biomass. Under agrarian conditions, we would presume them to be somewhat less. Calculations based on statistical data for the use of construction minerals in Vienna around the year 1800 and bottom up estimations for the use of construction minerals per building, suggest an annual DMC of construction minerals of 0.5–1.0 ton/c. They would typically not be transported over large distances (see model description above). According to rough estimates including rural and urban demand for construction minerals in our model would increase transport expenditure in terms of human and animal labour by 5–15 %.
- 26.
Of course, in the longer run the territory around an urban centre would become restructured in a similar way as happens in the villages themselves that organise land use so as to minimise transportation. But there are certainly limits to such a restructuring. For an empirical case see twelfth century Constantinople (Koder 1997).
- 27.
For our calculation, it does not matter where the labourers in the transport business actually live; by definition, they belong to the urban population, as the rural population works 100% in agriculture.
- 28.
One should be aware that in our model we keep the material standard of living constant by securing a constant amount of food and other material input per capita.
- 29.
On the other hand, by implication the competitive advantage that can be gained from non area-dependent modes of transport, such as downstream rafting or sailing, or using coal/oil for driving engines, becomes obvious.
- 30.
In the light of this, one may still find it astonishing how little historical urban intelligence was invested into such efforts, perhaps with the notable exception of the Egyptian and Roman Empires, who developed systematic scientific expertise for this purpose.
References
Arnold, A. (1997). Allgemeine Agrargeographie. Gotha/Stuttgart: Klett-Perthes.
Barles, S. (2009). Urban metabolism of Paris and its region. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 13, 898–913.
Beck, R. (1993). Unterfinning. Ländliche Welt vor Anbruch der Moderne. München: C.H. Beck.
Billen, G., Barles, S., Garnier, J., Rouillard, J., & Benoit, P. (2009). The food-print of Paris: Long-term reconstruction of the nitrogen flows imported into the city from its rural hinterland. Regional Environmental Change, 9, 13–24.
Boserup, E. (1965). The conditions of agricultural growth. The economics of agrarian change under population pressure. Chicago: Aldine/Earthscan.
Boserup, E. (1981). Population and technology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Boyden, S. (1987). Western civilization in biological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carlsen, J., Ørsted, P., & Skydsgaard, J. E. (1994). Landuse in the Roman Empire(Analecta Romana Instituti Danici: Supplementum 22). Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider.
Ciccantell, P. S., & Bunker, S. G. (1998). Space and transport in the world-system(Studies in the political economy of the world-system). Westport/London: Greenwood Press.
Cohen, M. N. (1977). The food crisis in prehistory. Overpopulation and the origins of agriculture. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Cusso, X., Garrabou, R., & Tello, E. (2006). Social metabolism in an agrarian region of Catalonia (Spain) in 1860 to 1870: Flows, energy balance and land use. Ecological Economics, 58, 49–65.
Fischer-Kowalski, M., & Haberl, H. (1993). Metabolism and colonization. Modes of production and the physical exchange between societies and nature. Innovation – The European Journal of Social Sciences, 6(4), 415–442.
Fischer-Kowalski, M., & Haberl, H. (2007). Socioecological transitions and global change: Trajectories of social metabolism and land use. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., & Smetschka, B. (2004). Modelling scenarios of transport across history from a socio-metabolic perspective. Review Fernand Braudel Center, 27(4), 307–342.
Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., Giljum, S., Lutter, S., Mayer, A., Bringezu, S., Moriguchi, Y., Schütz, H., Schandl, H., & Weisz, H. (2011). Methodology and indicators of economy wide material flow accounting. State of the art and reliablity across sources. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 15(6), 855–876.
Foster, J. B. (1999). Marx’s theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology. The American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 366–405.
Gingrich, S., Haidvogl, G., & Krausmann, F. (2012). The Danube and Vienna: Urban resource use, transport and land use 1800 to 1910. Regional Environmental Change, 12(2), 283–294. doi:10.1007/s10113-010-0201-x.
Goudsblom, J. (1992). Fire and civilization. London: Penguin.
Haberl, H., Winiwarter, V., Andersson, K., Ayres, R. U., Boone, C. G., Castillio, A., Cunfer, G., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Freudenburg, W. R., Furman, E., Kaufmann, R., Krausmann, F., Langthaler, E., Lotze-Campen, H., Mirtl, M., Redman, C. A., Reenberg, A., Wardell, A. D., Warr, B., & Zechmeister, H. (2006). From LTER to LTSER: Conceptualizing the socio-economic dimension of long-term socio-ecological research. Ecology and Society, 11,13. (Online), http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss2/art13/
Harris, M. (1987). Cultural anthropology. New York: Harper & Collins.
Hawkes, K., Hill, K., & O’Connell, J. F. (1982). Why hunters gather: Optimal foraging and the ache of eastern Paraguay. American Ethnologist, 9, 379–398.
Hitschmann, R., & Hitschmann, H. H. (1891). Vademecum für den Landwirth. Wien: Moritz Perles.
Koder, J. (1997). Fresh vegetables for the capital. In C. Mango & G. Dagron (Eds.), Constantinople and its Hinterland(pp. 49–56). Variourum: Aldershot.
Krausmann, F. (2004). Milk, manure and muscular power. Livestock and the industrialization of agriculture. Human Ecology, 32(6), 735–773.
Krausmann, F. (2008). Land use and socio-economic metabolism in pre-industrial agricultural systems: Four nineteenth-century Austrain Villages in Comparison(Social Ecology Working Paper; 72). Vienna: IFF Social Ecology.
Krausmann, F. (2011a). The global metabolic transition: a historical overview. In: F. Krausmann (Ed.), The socio-metabolic transition. Long term historical trends and patterns in global material and energy use(Social Ecology Working Paper 131, pp. 73–98). Vienna: Institute of Social Ecology.
Krausmann, F. (2013). A city and its Hinterland: Vienna’s energy metabolism 1800–2006. In S. Singh, H. Haberl, M. Schmid, M. Mirtl, & M. Chertow (Eds.), Long term socio ecological research. New York: Springer.
Krausmann, F., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Schandl, H., & Eisenmenger, N. (2008a). The global socio-metabolic transition: Past and present metabolic profiles and their future trajectories. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 12, 637–656.
Krausmann, F., Schandl, H., & Sieferle, R. P. (2008b). Socio-ecological regime transitions in Austria and the United Kingdom. Ecological Economics, 65, 187–201.
Krebs, J. R., & Davies, N. B. (1984). Behavioural ecology: An evolutionary approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Layton, R., Foley, R., & Williams, E. (1991). The transition between hunting and gathering and the specialized husbandry of resources: A socio-ecological approach. Current Anthropology, 32(3), 255–274.
Lee, R. B. (1980). Lactation, ovulation, infanticide, and women’s work: A study of hunter-gatherer population regulation. In M. N. Cohen et al. (Eds.), Biosocial mechanisms of population regulation(pp. 321–348). New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Lewis, H. T. (1982). Fire technology and resource management in aboriginal North America and Australia. In N. M. Williams & E. Hunn (Eds.), Resource managers: North American and Australian hunter-gatherers(pp. 45–67). Canberra: Australian Studies Press.
Liebig, J. (1964). Animal chemistry or organic chemistry in its application to physiology and pathology. New York: Johnson Reprint. (Original 1842).
Marx, K. (1976). Capital volume I. New York: Vintage.
McNetting, R. M. (1981). Balancing on an Alp. Ecological change and continuity in a Swiss mountain community. London/New York/New Rochelle/Melbourne/Sydney: Cambridge University Press.
McNetting, R. M. (1993). Smallholders, householders. Farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Möser, K. (2003, November). “Projekt “Der europäische Sonderweg” – Arbeitspapier zur Transportgeschichte”. Der Europäische Sonderweg: Die sozialmetabolische Transformation vom Agrarsystem zur Industrialisierung.
Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone age economics. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Sandgruber, R. (1982). Die Anfänge der Konsumgesellschaft. Konsumgüterverbrauch, Lebensstandard und Alltagskultur in Österreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Wien: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik.
Sieferle, R. P. (2001). The subterranean forest. Energy systems and the industrial revolution. Cambridge: The White Horse Press.
Singh, S. J., Haberl, H., Gaube, V., Grünbühel, C. M., Lisievici, P., Lutz, J., Matthews, R., Mirtl, M., Vadineanu, A., & Wildenberg, M. (2010). Conceptualising long-term socio-ecological research (LTSER): Integrating the social dimension. In F. Müller, C. Baessler, H. Schubert, & S. Klotz (Eds.), Long-term ecological research, between theory and application(pp. 377–398). Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer.
Takashi, K. (1998, September 3–5). Edo in the seventeenth century. In 4th international conference on urban history, Venice.
Teuteberg, H.-J. (1986). Der Verzehr von Lebensmitteln in Deutschland pro Kopf und Jahr seit Beginn der Industrialisierung (1850 bis 1975). Versuch einer quantitativen Langzeitanalyse. In H.-J. Teuteberg & G. Wiegelmann (Eds.), Unsere tägliche Kost. Geschichte und regionale Prägung(pp. 225–281). Münster: Coppenrath.
von Thünen, J. H. (1826). Der isolierte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirtschaft und Nationalökonomie. Jena: Fischer.
Weisz, H., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Grünbühel, C. M., Haberl, H., Krausmann, F., & Winiwarter, V. (2001). Global environmental change and historical transitions. Innovation – The European Journal of Social Sciences, 14(2), 117–142.
Weisz, H., Krausmann, F., Amann, C., Eisenmenger, N., Erb, K.-H., Hubacek, K., & Fischer-Kowalski, M. (2006). The physical economy of the European Union: Cross-country comparison and determinants of material consumption. Ecological Economics, 58, 676–698.
Winiwarter, V. (2002). Der umwelthistorische Beitrag zur Diskussion um nachhaltige Agrar-Entwicklung. Gaia, 11(2), 104–112.
Wrangham, R. (2009). Catching fire. How cooking made us human. New York: Basic Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., Smetschka, B. (2013). Modelling Transport as a Key Constraint to Urbanisation in Pre-industrial Societies. In: Singh, S., Haberl, H., Chertow, M., Mirtl, M., Schmid, M. (eds) Long Term Socio-Ecological Research. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1177-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1177-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1176-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1177-8
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)