Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

 
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below. 
Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet. 
 
List of Headings 
 
 
i Legislation brings temporary improvements 
 
ii The increasing speed of suburban development 
 
iii A new area of academic interest 
 
iv The impact of environmental extremes on city 
planning 
 
v The first campaigns for environmental change 
 
vi Building cities in earthquake zones 
 
vii The effect of global warming on cities 
 
viii Adapting areas surrounding cities to provide 
resources 
 
ix Removing the unwanted by-products of city life 
 
x Providing health information for city dwellers 
1 Section A 
2 Section B 
3 Section C 
4 Section D 
5 Section E 
6 Section F 
7 Section G 
 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
129 
The US City and the Natural Environment 
A 
While cities and their metropolitan areas have always interacted with and shaped the 
natural environment, it is only recently that historians have begun to consider this 
relationship. During our own time, the tension between natural and urbanized areas 
has increased, as the spread of metropolitan populations and urban land uses has 
reshaped and destroyed natural landscapes and environments. 
B 
The relationship between the city and the natural environment has actually been 
circular, with cities having massive effects on the natural environment, while the 
natural environment, in turn, has profoundly shaped urban configurations. Urban 
history is filled with stories about how city dwellers contended with the forces of 
nature that threatened their lives. Nature not only caused many of the annoyances of 
daily urban life, such as bad weather and pests, but it also gave rise to natural disasters 
and catastrophes such as floods, fires, and earthquakes.
In order to protect themselves and their settlements against the forces of nature, cities 
built many defences including flood walls and dams, earthquake-resistant buildings, 
and storage places for food and water. At times, such protective steps sheltered 
urbanites against the worst natural furies, but often their own actions – such as 
building under the shadow of volcanoes, or in earthquake-prone zones – exposed 
them to danger from natural hazards. 
C 
City populations require food, water, fuel, and construction materials, while urban 
industries need natural materials for production purposes. In order to fulfil these 
needs, urbanites increasingly had to reach far beyond their boundaries. In the 
nineteenth century, for instance, the demands of city dwellers for food produced rings 
of garden farms around cities. 
In the twentieth century, as urban populations increased, the demand for food drove 
the rise of large factory farms. Cities also require fresh water supplies in order to exist 
– engineers built waterworks, dug wells deeper and deeper into the earth looking for 
groundwater, and dammed and diverted rivers to obtain water supplies for domestic 
and industrial uses. In the process of obtaining water from distant locales, cities often 
transformed them, making deserts where there had been fertile agricultural areas.