Man’s Relationship to His Environment 
By cultivation man shortens the time which a natural 
recuperation of fertility would require. This intensification 
makes possible a considerable increase in the size of concentrated 
communities and of population density in general. But 
sedentariness also means man’s increased vulnerability to 
seasonal changes of climate, floods and drought. ‘To meet these 
dangers, and to create a bearable domestic micro-climate 
throughout the year, permanent houses are built and grouped 
in village clusters. But the characteristic determinant of 
environmental structure is the organization of biotic processes 
(Fig. 2). 
Urbanity 
Town building represents an additional artificial arrangement 
in the human environment. Since the land can be made to 
produce more food than is required by the primary producer 
for his own and his family’s needs, it can also supply a “surplus” 
urban population with other aims than land cultivation. In 
principle these aims are social: the creation of a new ecological 
system of social interaction, of classes and professions, in which 
the farming population is only one layer, though the basic one. 
The urban population considers itself as living no longer from 
the land, but by the mutual exchange of goods and services 
among men. The individual now belongs not to a particular 
landscape but to a social organization spread over a whole 
region, which may contain villages, hamlets, forests, water 
resources, etc., and at least one fortified urban nucleus. This 
centre absorbs a major part of the region’s products, and from 
it the region is ruled. The human determinants of land use are 
a sociological order on the one hand and an agricultural order 
on the other hand. Where these orders exist in mutual harmony, 
men find their living space extended over a whole region. The 
radius of human mobility and contacts increases enormously, 
and the order of rest and movement changes in character. ‘The 
market appears as a central focus of exchange; land use, even 
in far-away villages, may become more specialized, or more 
adapted to the natural character of the land. The urban 
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