# data[].attributes.body
Are public arts overrated?

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/pn74pSlznj8

# data[].attributes.body
 
Liza(3)
Liza(3)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749114003844


Megacities can affect the environment in several ways. The population consumes food and energy and produces waste in solid, liquid, and gaseous form in order to sustain themselves and pursue business activities such as manufacture or services. Due to the very high population density in many cases neither food nor raw materials or energy can be produced locally. As a consequence, additional impacts on the environment occur through transportation of goods and waste products in and out of the cities.
Kamilla essay
Kamilla essay
https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/air-pollutants-megacities-growing-problem 
Megacities — cities with populations equaling or greater than 10 million people — are producing an unprecedented amount of air pollution, according to scientists at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.With more and more people moving out of the country and into cities each year, megacity air pollution is an emerging environmental and health problem, says Charles Kolb. 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231007007911 
Due to its rapidly expanding economic and industrial developments, China is currently considered to be the engine of the world's economic growth. China's economic growth has been accompanied by an expansion of the urban area population and the emergence of a number of mega cities since the 1990. 
http://www.air-quality.org.uk/11.php 
The worst pollutant affecting the megacities as a whole is suspended particulate matter (SPM), particularly amongst megacities in the continent of Asia. This is of particular concern as high levels of SPM are known to be related to increased mortality rates, and in many of the megacities in developing countries health care for acute cases is less proficient than in developed countries. 
Essay Jennifer (3/3)
Essay Jennifer (3/3)
https://www.google.ch/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2012/jan/21/rise-megacity-live
"Optimists see a new network of powerful, stable and prosperous city states, each bigger than many small countries, where the benefits of urban living, the relative ease of delivering basic services compared to rural zones and new civic identities combine to raise living standards for billions. Pessimists see the opposite: a dystopic future where huge numbers of people fight over scarce resources in sprawling, divided, anarchic "non-communities" ravaged by disease and violence."
Essay Jennifer (2/3)
Essay Jennifer (2/3)
https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/02/17/geography-in-the-news-the-growth-of-megacities/
"Urbanization has been occurring in the developed countries of the West for 200 years. Since the Industrial Revolution, a period from the 18th to 19th century in which machine-based manufacturing grew tremendously, cities have grown rapidly. As technological innovations flourished, economies previously dependent on manual labor and draft-animals began to change. People moved into the cities to find work and relatively quickly, cities began to grow exponentially."
Essay Jennifer (1/3)
Essay Jennifer (1/3)
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6684694?guccounter=1
"The world is rapidly becoming urban. More than half the world’s 7-plus billion people live in urban areas (urban cores, suburbs and small towns). Nearly a quarter of the population lives in “cities” of a million or more. Eight percent reside in megacities — urban areas of at least 10 million. And that percentage rises with each new megacity."
Essay theo bloesch 2
Essay theo bloesch 2
verse markets. Sean Hyett, Analyst at GlobalData, explains: “Technological advancement will be needed to meet the growing population’s needs, two examples are transportation and the desire to remain connected. Factors like this will be even more prominent in emerging markets where, as incomes begin to rise, demand for such technologies will grow substantially.”

Cities across the globe are expanding; but they are changing in other ways also, Hyett, continues: “As the urban population grows, emerging markets are experiencing rising incomes and cities in all parts of the world are witnessing an aging demographic trend. This means that social and cultural behaviors can change quickly and frequently. To stay on top of these trends it is essential to know what consumers in these markets need and want; city-level insight is now vital for understanding such developments.”



https://www.globaldata.com/importance-megacities-contemporary-economy

Liza(2)
Liza(2)
https://www.allianz.com/en/press/news/studies/151130_the-megacity-of-the-future-is-smart/

There are already 29 megacities and the number is growing fast. The concentration of inhabitants, buildings and infrastructures is rising exponentially as available space continues to shrink. Many of these cities are located in low-lying coastal regions, which are especially vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather and climate change. At the same time, life expectancy is increasing in many regions of the world; above all in Asia. In 2030, 15% of the world’s population will be older than 60. This trend is also taking place in megacities.

Liza(1)
Liza(1)
https://www.allianz.com/en/about_us/open-knowledge/topics/demography/articles/130103-twelve-fastest-growing-megacities.html/


The booming political, financial and commercial capital of Nigeria is a port city that in recent years has become a major oil exporter. It is a magnet for the country’s growing population, which is increasing by about 4.3 million people a year, according to United Nations’ estimates—an annual increase of about 2.5 percent. The majority of Nigerians still live in the countryside so there is a lot of potential for further urbanization as the country’s economy develops and rural-urban migration continues.

Jaime
Jaime
https://www.google.es/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/17/multiculturalism-diversity-political-policy
As a political process, however, multiculturalism means something very different. It describes a set of policies, the aim of which is to manage diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. It is a case, not for open borders and minds, but for the policing of borders, whether physical, cultural or imaginative.


Essay theo bloesch
Essay theo bloesch
Peter Harris, director of sustainability for Europe at UPS, notes that blockages in transportation and increases in air pollution go hand in hand. This is a major concern as most new megacities are projected to be in emerging economies, and the majority of these locales have limited public transit systems and air quality standards.






https://glabsus.com/interactive/are-we-ready-for-the-rise-of-megacities/?canonicalUrl=https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-connections/ng-interactive/2016/mar/24/prepare-for-the-rise-of-the-megacity&shouldUnlock=true

Jaime
Jaime
https://www.iep.utm.edu/multicul/
Cultural diversity has been present in societies for a very long time. In Ancient Greece, there were various small regions with different costumes, traditions, dialects and identities, for example, those from Aetolia, Locris, Doris and Epirus. In the Ottoman Empire, Muslims were the majority, but there were also Christians, Jews, pagan Arabs, and other religious groups. In the 21st century, societies remain culturally diverse, with most countries having a mixture of individuals from different races, linguistic backgrounds, religious affiliations, and so forth. Contemporary political theorists have labeled this phenomenon of the coexistence of different cultures in the same geographical space multiculturalism. That is, one of the meanings of multiculturalism is the coexistence of different cultures.
Jaime
Jaime
https://www.britannica.com/topic/multiculturalism

Multiculturalism stands as a challenge to liberal democracy. In liberal democracies, all citizens should be treated equally under the law by abstracting the common identity of “citizen” from the real social, cultural, political, and economic positions and identities of real members of society. That leads to a tendency to homogenize the collective of citizens and assume a common political culture that all participate in. However, that abstract view ignores other politically salientfeatures of the identities of political subjects that exceed the category of citizen, such as race, religion, class, and sex. Although claiming the formal equality of citizens, the liberal democratic view tends to underemphasize ways in which citizens are not in fact equal in society. Rather than embracing the traditional liberal image of the melting pot into which people of different cultures are assimilated into a unified national culture, multiculturalism generally holds the image of a tossed salad to be more appropriate. Although being an integral and recognizable part of the whole, diverse members of society can maintain their particular identities while residing in the collective.
Karlo
Karlo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Crime rates vary among U.S. states.[66] In 2011, the state with the lowest violent crime rate was Maine, with a rate of 123.2 per 100,000 residents, while the state with the highest violent crime rate was Tennessee, with a rate of 608.2 per 100,000.[66] However, the District of Columbia, the U.S. capital district, had a violent crime rate of 1,202.1 per 100,000 in 2011.[66] In 2011, the state with the highest property crime rate was South Carolina, with a rate of 3,904.2 per 100,000, while the state with the lowest property crime rate was South Dakota, with a rate of 1,817.7 per 100,000.[66] However, Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, had a property crime rate of 1,395.2 per 100,000 in 2011.[66]


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/US_States_by_Incarceration_Rate.svg/220px-US_States_by_Incarceration_Rate.svg.png
Karlo
Karlo
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/this-is-how-megacities-are-being-held-back-by-violence/

Different cities are affected by different armed actors with their own drivers and agendas. But there is growing evidence that overcrowded and sprawling cities are more likely to be afflicted by protracted violence. This tends to be the case in developing countries where the state has been overwhelmed by the scale of urbanization.


Karlo 
Karlo 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity

As with any large concentration of people, there is usually crime. High population densities, placing lots of people together, invariably result in higher crime rates, as visibly seen in growing megacities such as Karachi, Mumbai, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, and Lagos.
Charles - Wikipedia 'Feudalism'
Charles - Wikipedia 'Feudalism'

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism)

“The classic François-Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. A lord was in broad terms a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.”
 
Feudalism - Wikipedia
A broader definition of feudalism, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but also those of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry bound by manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society".
Wikipedia
Charles - The Private Cities of Honduras
Charles - The Private Cities of Honduras
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csxgsg)

Nearly a decade ago a US star economist, Paul Romer, proposed “charter cities” as a model for developing countries to escape poverty and violence: new cities with Western-style institutions and laws, to be built and managed by foreigners in semi-autonomous enclaves carved out of the country. These new cities would hopefully attract investment from abroad and offer stability and prosperity to locals.

Many condemned the initiative as thinly-veiled colonialism. But the current leaders of Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most violent in the world, were receptive to Romer’s idea, feeling they had little to lose. They have begun laying down the legal groundwork for the plan. President Juan Orlando Hernandez won re-election in 2017 in a vote where the privatised cities plan was one of the central controversies.

But activists warn that the privatised enclaves will only worsen social inequality and undermine sovereignty in an already weak and deeply divided country.

How much sovereignty should poor countries like Honduras relinquish to chase foreign investment? Can cities, by definition the wellspring of civic spirit, flourish if their public institutions are privatised? Should someone own an entire city? And would you like to live in it?


 
The Private Cities of Honduras, Money & Power - BBC World Service
Will the plan to privatise entire cities in Honduras work?
BBC
Charles - Come In If You're Rich – Gated Communities
Charles - Come In If You're Rich – Gated Communities
 (en.reset.org)

Parallel to the growth of slums, gated communities – or exclusive neighbourhoods – are also on the rise. These are fenced and well-monitored communities in which affluent members live, further driving the trend towards separation among urban populations.


But it's not just living spaces splitting the cities – globally, there is a major push towards big new building projects like über-modern banks and business districts which stand in stark contrast to informal areas for the poor. These central business districts (CBD) are often siloed off from the main part of the city and migrate, along with the gated communities, towards the outskirts of town as is the case in Pudong, Shanghai and Beijing.

For the most part, urban planning is based on the needs of the consumer and culture-oriented upper classes and economic growth sectors with the result being that the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Such fragmented cities are a fragile entity in which conflicts are inevitable.

 
Megacities | Urbanity
According to a UN Habitat forecast, two thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2030. Not least because of their population density, cities have become a huge focal point when it comes to sustainable development.
RESET.to
Saud
Saud
 
صحيفة سبق الإلكترونية‎
صحيفة الكترونية سعودية هدفها السبق في نقل الحدث بمهنية ومصداقية خدمة للوطن والمواطن.
Sabq
Polly
Polly
https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine
Liza (Guardian
Liza (Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/ushttps://www.theguardian.com/us
UkHwan
UkHwan
https://
www.naver.com
Oliwia
Oliwia
 
Is living in the countryside healthier?
If research suggesting that people who live close to major roads could have a higher risk of dementia has prompted thoughts of clean, traffic-free countryside living, then you are probably not alone. But what is the reality? Is a rural existence better for our health?
BBC News
Duru Arca (the best)
Duru Arca (the best)
 
Sözcü Gazetesi
Son dakika haberleri,köşe yazarları,en güncel haber ve son dakika haberleri,Türkiye'nin yeni açılış sayfası
Sozcu
Theo Bloesch
Theo Bloesch
https://www.ch.ch/fr/
Jaime
Jaime
http://worldpopulationhistory.org/urbanization-and-the-megacity/
Alina 
Alina 
https://www.google.at/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/megacities/2011/04/04/the-problem-with-megacities/amp/
Veeeerrrry trustworthy page:D
Veeeerrrry trustworthy page:D
http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/global-cities-prosperity-parity#

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/02/17/geography-in-the-news-the-growth-of-megacities/
Karlo
Karlo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity
Charles - Financial Times
Charles - Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb8a08e-0089-11e1-ba33-00144feabdc0
 
Jennifer
Jennifer
https://www.vice.com/de_ch
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page


add 

# data[].attributes.headline
Would the Nefertiti Statue in Samalutu be more appreciated in a museum?

# data[].attributes.subject
Would the Nefertiti Statue in Samalutu be more appreciated in a museum?

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/air-pollutants-megacities-growing-problem

Megacities — cities with populations equaling or greater than 10 million people — are producing an unprecedented amount of air pollution, according to scientists at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.With more and more people moving out of the country and into cities each year, megacity air pollution is an emerging environmental and health problem, says Charles Kolb.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231007007911

Due to its rapidly expanding economic and industrial developments, China is currently considered to be the engine of the world's economic growth. China's economic growth has been accompanied by an expansion of the urban area population and the emergence of a number of mega cities since the 1990.

http://www.air-quality.org.uk/11.php

The worst pollutant affecting the megacities as a whole is suspended particulate matter (SPM), particularly amongst megacities in the continent of Asia. This is of particular concern as high levels of SPM are known to be related to increased mortality rates, and in many of the megacities in developing countries health care for acute cases is less proficient than in developed countries.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.google.ch/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2012/jan/21/rise-megacity-live

"Optimists see a new network of powerful, stable and prosperous city states, each bigger than many small countries, where the benefits of urban living, the relative ease of delivering basic services compared to rural zones and new civic identities combine to raise living standards for billions. Pessimists see the opposite: a dystopic future where huge numbers of people fight over scarce resources in sprawling, divided, anarchic "non-communities" ravaged by disease and violence."

# data[].attributes.body
https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/02/17/geography-in-the-news-the-growth-of-megacities/

"Urbanization has been occurring in the developed countries of the West for 200 years. Since the Industrial Revolution, a period from the 18th to 19th century in which machine-based manufacturing grew tremendously, cities have grown rapidly. As technological innovations flourished, economies previously dependent on manual labor and draft-animals began to change. People moved into the cities to find work and relatively quickly, cities began to grow exponentially."

# data[].attributes.body
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6684694?guccounter=1

"The world is rapidly becoming urban. More than half the world’s 7-plus billion people live in urban areas (urban cores, suburbs and small towns). Nearly a quarter of the population lives in “cities” of a million or more. Eight percent reside in megacities — urban areas of at least 10 million. And that percentage rises with each new megacity."

# data[].attributes.body
verse markets. Sean Hyett, Analyst at GlobalData, explains: “Technological advancement will be needed to meet the growing population’s needs, two examples are transportation and the desire to remain connected. Factors like this will be even more prominent in emerging markets where, as incomes begin to rise, demand for such technologies will grow substantially.”

Cities across the globe are expanding; but they are changing in other ways also, Hyett, continues: “As the urban population grows, emerging markets are experiencing rising incomes and cities in all parts of the world are witnessing an aging demographic trend. This means that social and cultural behaviors can change quickly and frequently. To stay on top of these trends it is essential to know what consumers in these markets need and want; city-level insight is now vital for understanding such developments.”

https://www.globaldata.com/importance-megacities-contemporary-economy

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.allianz.com/en/press/news/studies/151130_the-megacity-of-the-future-is-smart/

There are already 29 megacities and the number is growing fast. The concentration of inhabitants, buildings and infrastructures is rising exponentially as available space continues to shrink. Many of these cities are located in low-lying coastal regions, which are especially vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather and climate change. At the same time, life expectancy is increasing in many regions of the world; above all in Asia. In 2030, 15% of the world’s population will be older than 60. This trend is also taking place in megacities.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.allianz.com/en/about_us/open-knowledge/topics/demography/articles/130103-twelve-fastest-growing-megacities.html/

The booming political, financial and commercial capital of Nigeria is a port city that in recent years has become a major oil exporter. It is a magnet for the country’s growing population, which is increasing by about 4.3 million people a year, according to United Nations’ estimates—an annual increase of about 2.5 percent. The majority of Nigerians still live in the countryside so there is a lot of potential for further urbanization as the country’s economy develops and rural-urban migration continues.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.google.es/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/17/multiculturalism-diversity-political-policy
As a political process, however, multiculturalism means something very different. It describes a set of policies, the aim of which is to manage diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. It is a case, not for open borders and minds, but for the policing of borders, whether physical, cultural or imaginative.

# data[].attributes.body
Peter Harris, director of sustainability for Europe at UPS, notes that blockages in transportation and increases in air pollution go hand in hand. This is a major concern as most new megacities are projected to be in emerging economies, and the majority of these locales have limited public transit systems and air quality standards.

https://glabsus.com/interactive/are-we-ready-for-the-rise-of-megacities/?canonicalUrl=https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-connections/ng-interactive/2016/mar/24/prepare-for-the-rise-of-the-megacity&shouldUnlock=true

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.iep.utm.edu/multicul/
Cultural diversity has been present in societies for a very long time. In Ancient Greece, there were various small regions with different costumes, traditions, dialects and identities, for example, those from Aetolia, Locris, Doris and Epirus. In the Ottoman Empire, Muslims were the majority, but there were also Christians, Jews, pagan Arabs, and other religious groups. In the 21st century, societies remain culturally diverse, with most countries having a mixture of individuals from different races, linguistic backgrounds, religious affiliations, and so forth. Contemporary political theorists have labeled this phenomenon of the coexistence of different cultures in the same geographical space multiculturalism. That is, one of the meanings of multiculturalism is the coexistence of different cultures.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.britannica.com/topic/multiculturalism

Multiculturalism stands as a challenge to liberal democracy. In liberal democracies, all citizens should be treated equally under the law by abstracting the common identity of “citizen” from the real social, cultural, political, and economic positions and identities of real members of society. That leads to a tendency to homogenize the collective of citizens and assume a common political culture that all participate in. However, that abstract view ignores other politically salientfeatures of the identities of political subjects that exceed the category of citizen, such as race, religion, class, and sex. Although claiming the formal equality of citizens, the liberal democratic view tends to underemphasize ways in which citizens are not in fact equal in society. Rather than embracing the traditional liberal image of the melting pot into which people of different cultures are assimilated into a unified national culture, multiculturalism generally holds the image of a tossed salad to be more appropriate. Although being an integral and recognizable part of the whole, diverse members of society can maintain their particular identities while residing in the collective.

# data[].attributes.body
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Crime rates vary among U.S. states.[66] In 2011, the state with the lowest violent crime rate was Maine, with a rate of 123.2 per 100,000 residents, while the state with the highest violent crime rate was Tennessee, with a rate of 608.2 per 100,000.[66] However, the District of Columbia, the U.S. capital district, had a violent crime rate of 1,202.1 per 100,000 in 2011.[66] In 2011, the state with the highest property crime rate was South Carolina, with a rate of 3,904.2 per 100,000, while the state with the lowest property crime rate was South Dakota, with a rate of 1,817.7 per 100,000.[66] However, Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, had a property crime rate of 1,395.2 per 100,000 in 2011.[66]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/US_States_by_Incarceration_Rate.svg/220px-US_States_by_Incarceration_Rate.svg.png

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/this-is-how-megacities-are-being-held-back-by-violence/

Different cities are affected by different armed actors with their own drivers and agendas. But there is growing evidence that overcrowded and sprawling cities are more likely to be afflicted by protracted violence. This tends to be the case in developing countries where the state has been overwhelmed by the scale of urbanization.

# data[].attributes.body
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity

As with any large concentration of people, there is usually crime. High population densities, placing lots of people together, invariably result in higher crime rates, as visibly seen in growing megacities such as Karachi, Mumbai, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, and Lagos.

# data[].attributes.body
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism)

“The classic François-Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. A lord was in broad terms a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Investiture of a knight (miniature from the statutes of the Order of the Knot, founded in 1352 by Louis I of Naples)

Orava Castle in Slovakia. A medieval castle is a traditional symbol of a feudal society.

Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

The classic definition, by François Louis Ganshof (1944), describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility and revolved around the key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. A broader definition, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry, all of whom were bound by a system of manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society".

Although it is derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum (fief), which was used during the Medieval period, the term feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages. Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds's Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.

There is no commonly accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least among scholars. The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and the noun feudalism was in use by the end of the 18th century, paralleling the French féodalité.

According to a classic definition by François Louis Ganshof (1944), feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility that revolved around the key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs, though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment was only related to the "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word."

A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's Feudal Society (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and those who lived off their labour, most directly the peasantry, which was bound by a system of manorialism. This order is often referred to as a feudal society, echoing Bloch's usage.

Outside its European context, the concept of feudalism is often used by analogy, most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the , and sometimes in discussions of the Zagwe dynasty in medieval Ethiopia, which had some feudal characteristics (sometimes called "semifeudal"). Some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism (or traces of it) in places as diverse as Spring and Autumn period China, ancient Egypt, the Parthian Empire, India until the Mughal dynasty and the Antebellum South and Jim Crow laws in the American South.

The term feudalism has also been applied-often pejoratively-to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes similar to those in medieval Europe are perceived to prevail. Some historians and political theorists believe that the term feudalism has been deprived of specific meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.

The applicability of the term feudalism has also been questioned in the context of some Central and Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Lithuania, with scholars observing that the medieval political and economic structure of those countries bears some, but not all, resemblances to the Western European societies commonly described as feudal.

Herr Reinmar von Zweter, a 13th-century Minnesinger, was depicted with his noble arms in Codex Manesse.

The word feudal comes from the medieval Latin feudālis, the adjectival form of feudum 'fee, feud', first attested in a charter of Charles the Fat in 884, which is related to Old French fé, fié, Provençal feo, feu, fieu, and Italian fio. The ultimate origin of feudālis is unclear. It may come from a Germanic word, perhaps fehu or *fehôd, but these words are not attested in this meaning in Germanic sources, or even in the Latin of the Frankish laws.

One theory about the origin of fehu was proposed by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870, being supported by, amongst others, William Stubbs and Marc Bloch. Kern derived the word from a putative Frankish term *fehu-ôd, in which *fehu means "cattle" and -ôd means "goods", implying "a movable object of value". Bloch explains that by the beginning of the 10th century it was common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with objects of equivalent value, such as arms, clothing, horses or food. This was known as feos, a term that took on the general meaning of paying for something in lieu of money. This meaning was then applied to land itself, in which land was used to pay for fealty, such as to a vassal. Thus the old word feos meaning movable property would have changed to feus, meaning the exact opposite: landed property.

Archibald Ross Lewis proposes that the origin of 'fief' is not feudum (or feodum), but rather foderum, the earliest attested use being in Vita Hludovici (840) by Astronomus. In that text is a passage about Louis the Pious that says annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant, which can be translated as "Louis forbade that military provender (which they popularly call "fodder") be furnished."

Initially in medieval Latin European documents, a land grant in exchange for service was called a beneficium (Latin). Later, the term feudum, or feodum, began to replace beneficium in the documents. The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were seen up to one-hundred years earlier. The origin of the feudum and why it replaced beneficium has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below.

The term "féodal" was first used in 17th-century French legal treatises (1614) and translated into English legal treatises as an adjective, such as "feodal government".

In the 18th century, Adam Smith, seeking to describe economic systems, effectively coined the forms "feudal government" and "feudal system" in his book The Wealth of Nations (1776). The phrase "feudal system" appeared in 1736, in Baronia Anglica, published nine years after the death of its author Thomas Madox, in 1727. In 1771, in his book The History of Manchester, John Whitaker first introduced the word "feudalism" and the notion of the feudal pyramid.

Another theory by Alauddin Samarrai suggests an Arabic origin, from fuyū (the plural of fay, which literally means "the returned", and was used especially for 'land that has been conquered from enemies that did not fight'). Samarrai's theory is that early forms of 'fief' include feo, feu, feuz, feuum and others, the plurality of forms strongly suggesting origins from a loanword. The first use of these terms is in Languedoc, one of the least Germanic areas of Europe and bordering Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Further, the earliest use of feuum (as a replacement for beneficium) can be dated to 899, the same year a Muslim base at Fraxinetum ( La Garde-Freinet) in Provence was established. It is possible, Samarrai says, that French scribes, writing in Latin, attempted to transliterate the Arabic word fuyū (the plural of fay), which was used by the Muslim invaders and occupiers at the time, resulting in a plurality of forms - feo, feu, feuz, feuum and others-from which eventually feudum derived. Samarrai, however, also advises to handle this theory with care, as Medieval and Early Modern Muslim scribes often used etymologically "fanciful roots" to support outlandish claims that something was of Arabian or Muslim origin.

Feudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire: such as in the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century AD, which lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure[clarification needed ] necessary to support cavalry without allocating land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.

These acquired powers significantly diminished unitary power in these empires. However, once the infrastructure to maintain unitary power was re-established-as with the European monarchies-feudalism began to yield to this new power structure and eventually disappeared.

The classic François Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility based on the key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. In broad terms a lord was a noble who held land, a vassal was a person granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and protection by the lord, the vassal provided some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.

Homage of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis

Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. "Fealty" also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal made during homage. Such an oath follows homage.

Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and vassal were in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to provide aid or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal had to answer calls to military service by the lord. This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, whether manorial, baronial, both termed court baron, or at the king's court.

France in the late 15th century: a mosaic of feudal territories

It could also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also included sentencing by the lord for criminal offences, including capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal court, such deliberation could include the question of declaring war. These are examples of feudalism; depending on the period of time and location in Europe, feudal customs and practices varied.

In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and the transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form of "politics of land" (an expression used by the historian Marc Bloch). The 11th century in France saw what has been called by historians a " feudal revolution" or "mutation" and a "fragmentation of powers" (Bloch) that was unlike the development of feudalism in England or Italy or in Germany in the same period or later: Counties and duchies began to break down into smaller holdings as castellans and lesser took control of local lands, and (as comital families had done before them) lesser lords usurped/privatized a wide range of prerogatives and rights of the state, including travel dues, market dues, fees for using woodlands, obligations, use the lord's mill and, most importantly, the highly profitable rights of justice, etc. (what Georges Duby called collectively the " seigneurie banale"). Power in this period became more personal.

This "fragmentation of powers" was not, however, systematic throughout France, and in certain counties (such as Flanders, Normandy, Anjou, Toulouse), counts were able to maintain control of their lands into the 12th century or later. Thus, in some regions (like Normandy and Flanders), the vassal/feudal system was an effective tool for ducal and comital control, linking vassals to their lords; but in other regions, the system led to significant confusion, all the more so as vassals could and frequently did pledge themselves to two or more lords. In response to this, the idea of a "liege lord" was developed (where the obligations to one lord are regarded as superior) in the 12th century.

End of European feudalism (1500-1850s)

Around this time, rich, "middle-class" commoners chafed at the authority and powers held by feudal lords, overlords, and nobles, and preferred the idea of autocratic rule where a king and one royal court held almost all the power. Feudal nobles regardless of ethnicity generally thought of themselves as arbiters of a politically free system, so this often puzzled them before the fall of most feudal laws.

Most of the military aspects of feudalism effectively ended by about 1500. This was partly since the military shifted from armies consisting of the nobility to professional fighters thus reducing the nobility's claim on power, but also because the Black Death reduced the nobility's hold over the lower classes. Vestiges of the feudal system hung on in France until the French Revolution of the 1790s. Even when the original feudal relationships had disappeared, there were many institutional remnants of feudalism left in place. Historian Georges Lefebvre explains how at an early stage of the French Revolution, on just one night of August 4, 1789, France abolished the long-lasting remnants of the feudal order. It announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely." Lefebvre explains:

Without debate the Assembly enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and redemption of all manorial rights except for those involving personal servitude-which were to be abolished without indemnification. Other proposals followed with the same success: the equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of venality in office, conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption, freedom of worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefices ... Privileges of provinces and towns were offered as a last sacrifice.

Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than a quarter of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the large landowners. The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church.

In the Kingdom of France, following the French Revolution, feudalism was abolished with a decree of August 11, 1789 by the Constituent Assembly, a provision that was later extended to various parts of Italian kingdom following the invasion by French troops. In the Kingdom of Naples, Joachim Murat abolished feudalism with the law of August 2, 1806, then implemented with a law of September 1, 1806 and a royal decree of December 3, 1808. In the Kingdom of Sicily the abolishing law was issued by the Sicilian Parliament on August 10, 1812. In Piedmont feudalism ceased by virtue of the edicts of March 7, and July 19, 1797 issued by Charles Emmanuel IV, although in the Kingdom of Sardinia, specifically on the island of Sardinia, feudalism was abolished only with an edict of August 5, 1848.

In the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, feudalism was abolished with the law of December 5, 1861 n.º 342 were all feudal bonds abolished. The system lingered on in parts of Central and Eastern Europe as late as the 1850s. Slavery in Romania was abolished in 1856. Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861.

More recently in Scotland, on November 28, 2004, the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 entered into full force putting an end to what was left of the Scottish feudal system. The last feudal regime, that of the island of Sark, was abolished in December 2008, when the first democratic elections were held for the election of a local parliament and the appointment of a government. The "revolution" is a consequence of the juridical intervention of the European Parliament, which declared the local constitutional system as contrary to human rights, and, following a series of legal battles, imposed parliamentary democracy.

Depiction of socage on the royal demesne in feudal England, c. 1310

The phrase "feudal society" as defined by Marc Bloch offers a wider definition than Ganshof's and includes within the feudal structure not only the warrior aristocracy bound by vassalage, but also the peasantry bound by manorialism, and the estates of the Church. Thus the feudal order embraces society from top to bottom, though the "powerful and well-differentiated social group of the urban classes" came to occupy a distinct position to some extent outside the classic feudal hierarchy.

The idea of feudalism was unknown and the system it describes was not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the medieval period. This section describes the history of the idea of feudalism, how the concept originated among scholars and thinkers, how it changed over time, and modern debates about its use.

The concept of a feudal state or period, in the sense of either a regime or a period dominated by lords who possess financial or social power and prestige, became widely held in the middle of the 18th century, as a result of works such as Montesquieu's De L'Esprit des Lois (1748; published in English as The Spirit of Law), and Henri de Boulainvilliers's Histoire des anciens Parlements de France (1737; published in English as An Historical Account of the Ancient Parliaments of France or States-General of the Kingdom, 1739). In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the Ancien Régime, or French monarchy. This was the Age of Enlightenment, when writers valued reason and the Middle Ages were viewed as the " Dark Ages". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the "Dark Ages" including feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current French monarchy as a means of political gain. For them "feudalism" meant seigneurial privileges and prerogatives. When the French Constituent Assembly abolished the "feudal regime" in August 1789, this is what was meant.

Adam Smith used the term "feudal system" to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system, wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles.

Karl Marx also uses the term in the 19th century in his analysis of society's economic and political development, describing feudalism (or more usually feudal society or the feudal mode of production) as the order coming before capitalism. For Marx, what defined feudalism was the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy) in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce and money rents. He deemed feudalism a 'democracy of unfreedom', juxtaposing the oppression of feudal subjects with a holistic integration of political and economic life of the sort lacking under industrial capitalism.

He also took it as a paradigm for understanding the power-relationships between capitalists and wage-labourers in his own time: "in pre-capitalist systems it was obvious that most people did not control their own destiny-under feudalism, for instance, serfs had to work for their lords. Capitalism seems different because people are in theory free to work for themselves or for others as they choose. Yet most workers have as little control over their lives as feudal serfs." Some later Marxist theorists (e.g. Eric Wolf) have applied this label to include non-European societies, grouping feudalism together with imperial China and the Inca Empire, in the pre-Columbian era, as 'tributary' societies .

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, J. Horace Round and Frederic William Maitland, both historians of medieval Britain, arrived at different conclusions about the character of Anglo-Saxon English society before the Norman Conquest in 1066. Round argued that the Normans had brought feudalism with them to England, while Maitland contended that its fundamentals were already in place in Britain before 1066. The debate continues today, but a consensus viewpoint is that England before the Conquest had commendation (which embodied some of the personal elements in feudalism) while William the Conqueror introduced a modified and stricter northern French feudalism to England incorporating (1086) oaths of loyalty to the king by all who held by feudal tenure, even the vassals of his principal vassals (holding by feudal tenure meant that vassals must provide the quota of knights required by the king or a money payment in substitution).

In the 20th century, two outstanding historians offered still more widely differing perspectives. The French historian Marc Bloch, arguably the most influential 20th-century medieval historian, approached feudalism not so much from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one, presenting in Feudal Society (1939; English 1961) a feudal order not limited solely to the nobility. It is his radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers: while the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection - both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the aspects of life were centred on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, and a feudal economy.

In contradistinction to Bloch, the Belgian historian François Louis Ganshof defined feudalism from a narrow legal and military perspective, arguing that feudal relationships existed only within the medieval nobility itself. Ganshof articulated this concept in Qu'est-ce que la féodalité? ("What is feudalism?", 1944; translated in English as Feudalism). His classic definition of feudalism is widely accepted today among medieval scholars, though questioned both by those who view the concept in wider terms and by those who find insufficient uniformity in noble exchanges to support such a model.

Although Georges Duby was never formally a student in the circle of scholars around Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, that came to be known as the Annales school, Duby was an exponent of the Annaliste tradition. In a published version of his 1952 doctoral thesis entitled La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise ( Society in the 11th and 12th centuries in the Mâconnais region), and working from the extensive documentary sources surviving from the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, as well as the dioceses of Mâcon and Dijon, Duby excavated the complex social and economic relationships among the individuals and institutions of the Mâconnais region and charted a profound shift in the social structures of medieval society around the year 1000. He argued that in early 11th century, governing institutions-particularly comital courts established under the Carolingian monarchy-that had represented public justice and order in Burgundy during the 9th and 10th centuries receded and gave way to a new feudal order wherein independent aristocratic knights wielded power over peasant communities through strong-arm tactics and threats of violence.

In 1939, the Austrian historian Theodor Mayer subordinated the feudal state as secondary to his concept of a Personenverbandsstaat (personal interdependency state), understanding it in contrast to the territorial state. This form of statehood, identified with the Holy Roman Empire, is described as the most complete form of medieval rule, completing conventional feudal structure of lordship and vassalage with the personal association between the nobility. But the applicability of this concept to cases outside of the Holy Roman Empire has been questioned, as by Susan Reynolds. The concept has also been questioned and superseded in German historiography because of its bias and reductionism towards legitimating the Führerprinzip.

In 1974, the American historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown rejected the label feudalism as an anachronism that imparts a false sense of uniformity to the concept. Having noted the current use of many, often contradictory, definitions of feudalism, she argued that the word is only a construct with no basis in medieval reality, an invention of modern historians read back "tyrannically" into the historical record. Supporters of Brown have suggested that the term should be expunged from history textbooks and lectures on medieval history entirely. In Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (1994), Susan Reynolds expanded upon Brown's original thesis. Although some contemporaries questioned Reynolds's methodology, other historians have supported it and her argument. Reynolds argues:

Too many models of feudalism used for comparisons, even by Marxists, are still either constructed on the 16th-century basis or incorporate what, in a Marxist view, must surely be superficial or irrelevant features from it. Even when one restricts oneself to Europe and to feudalism in its narrow sense it is extremely doubtful whether feudo-vassalic institutions formed a coherent bundle of institutions or concepts that were structurally separate from other institutions and concepts of the time.

The term feudal has also been applied to non-Western societies, in which institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to have prevailed (see Examples of feudalism). Japan has been extensively studied in this regard. Karl Friday notes that in the 21st century historians of Japan rarely invoke feudalism; instead of looking at similarities, specialists attempting comparative analysis concentrate on fundamental differences. Ultimately, critics say, the many ways the term feudalism has been used have deprived it of specific meaning, leading some historians and political theorists to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.

Historian Richard Abels notes that "Western civilization and world civilization textbooks now shy away from the term 'feudalism'."

Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society. Tr. L.A. Manyon. Two volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. ISBN 0-226-05979-0.

Ganshof, François Louis (1952). . London; New York: Longmans, Green. ISBN 978-0-8020-7158-3.

Guerreau, Alain, L'avenir d'un passé incertain. Paris: Le Seuil, 2001 (complete history of the meaning of the term).

Poly, Jean-Pierre and Bournazel, Eric, The Feudal Transformation, 900-1200., Tr. Caroline Higgitt. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1991.

Reynolds, Susan, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-820648-8.

Herbert, Sydney. The Fall of Feudalism in France (1921) full text online free.

Mackrell, John Quentin Colborne. The Attack on Feudalism in Eighteenth-century France (Routledge, 2013).

Markoff, John. Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, and Legislators in the French Revolution (Penn State Press, 2010).

Sutherland, D. M. G. (2002). "Peasants, Lords, and Leviathan: Winners and Losers from the Abolition of French Feudalism, 1780-1820". The Journal of Economic History. 62 (1): 1-24. JSTOR 2697970.

"Feudalism", by Elizabeth A. R. Brown. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

"Feudalism?" Archived October 18, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, by Paul Halsall. Internet Medieval Sourcebook.

"Feudalism: the history of an idea", by Fredric Cheyette (Amherst), excerpted from New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (2004)

Medieval Feudalism, by Carl Stephenson. Cornell University Press, 1942. Classic introduction to Feudalism.

"The Problem of Feudalism: An Historiographical Essay" at the Wayback Machine (archived February 26, 2009), by Robert Harbison, 1996, Western Kentucky University.

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Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

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Charles - The Private Cities of Honduras

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Charles - The Private Cities of Honduras

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(https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csxgsg)

Nearly a decade ago a US star economist, Paul Romer, proposed “charter cities” as a model for developing countries to escape poverty and violence: new cities with Western-style institutions and laws, to be built and managed by foreigners in semi-autonomous enclaves carved out of the country. These new cities would hopefully attract investment from abroad and offer stability and prosperity to locals.

Many condemned the initiative as thinly-veiled colonialism. But the current leaders of Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most violent in the world, were receptive to Romer’s idea, feeling they had little to lose. They have begun laying down the legal groundwork for the plan. President Juan Orlando Hernandez won re-election in 2017 in a vote where the privatised cities plan was one of the central controversies.

But activists warn that the privatised enclaves will only worsen social inequality and undermine sovereignty in an already weak and deeply divided country.

How much sovereignty should poor countries like Honduras relinquish to chase foreign investment? Can cities, by definition the wellspring of civic spirit, flourish if their public institutions are privatised? Should someone own an entire city? And would you like to live in it?

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The Private Cities of Honduras, Money & Power - BBC World Service

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Will the plan to privatise entire cities in Honduras work?

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Charles - Come In If You're Rich – Gated Communities

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Charles - Come In If You're Rich – Gated Communities

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(en.reset.org)

Parallel to the growth of slums, gated communities – or exclusive neighbourhoods – are also on the rise. These are fenced and well-monitored communities in which affluent members live, further driving the trend towards separation among urban populations.

But it's not just living spaces splitting the cities – globally, there is a major push towards big new building projects like über-modern banks and business districts which stand in stark contrast to informal areas for the poor. These central business districts (CBD) are often siloed off from the main part of the city and migrate, along with the gated communities, towards the outskirts of town as is the case in Pudong, Shanghai and Beijing.

For the most part, urban planning is based on the needs of the consumer and culture-oriented upper classes and economic growth sectors with the result being that the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Such fragmented cities are a fragile entity in which conflicts are inevitable.

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According to a UN Habitat forecast, two thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2030. Not least because of their population density, cities have become a huge focal point when it comes to sustainable development.

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صحيفة سبق الإلكترونية‎

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صحيفة الكترونية سعودية هدفها السبق في نقل الحدث بمهنية ومصداقية خدمة للوطن والمواطن.

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https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine

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https://www.theguardian.com/ushttps://www.theguardian.com/us

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If research suggesting that people who live close to major roads could have a higher risk of dementia has prompted thoughts of clean, traffic-free countryside living, then you are probably not alone.

But what is the reality? Is a rural existence better for our health?

Like the causes of dementia itself, it is not a straightforward question and there are no clear-cut answers.

On the face of it, fleeing to the countryside seems like a good idea.

Less than a quarter of the UK population lives there for a start.

The air is cleaner, there is less traffic and air pollution - which increases the risk of stroke, lung cancer, heart disease and respiratory diseases - is not an issue.

There is also more opportunity to get out and exercise in all that open space - remember those long dog walks you have been fantasising about - and enjoy being surrounded by greenery.

Longer life

According to David Newby, British Heart Foundation professor of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, when it comes to air pollution, "being in the country is better for you".

That is because living away from busy roads reduces the risk of damage to the lungs and heart from fine particles and gases emitted by traffic.

While buses, high-rise buildings and stop-go traffic are known to increase the risk of exposure to pollution, Prof Newby says you do not have to move far to reduce the health risk.

"The closer you are to a major road the worse it is, but moving to the middle of Hyde Park could be sufficient," he said.

Roy Harrison, professor of environmental health at the University of Birmingham, says it is "significantly healthier" to live in the countryside.

He says research shows that air pollution is responsible for an average loss of life expectancy of six months across the UK and most of that is driven by urban populations.

"More remote rural areas have half the concentration of pollution of urban areas."

And a government report, which found that health outcomes are more favourable in rural areas than urban areas, seems to back up these findings.

Complicated picture

Life expectancy is higher, the infant mortality rate is lower and potential years of life lost from common causes of premature death are also lower in rural areas, it says.

But this does not tell the whole story - there are wide variations within rural and urban areas because of deprivation.

Someone who lives in a rural village is expected to live longer than someone living in a town in a rural area and someone living in a deprived urban area is less likely to live as long as someone brought up in a leafy city suburb.

According to an Office for National Statistics report from 2010, which tried to take deprivation into account, overall life expectancy was higher in rural areas, but the very highest life expectancies were found in the wealthiest urban areas.

Green and pleasant?

It is easy to romanticise the countryside and see it as a green, rural idyll which is quiet and stress-free.

But even if that was true (ever listened to The Archers?), it can bring its own issues.

With an older population on average living in rural areas, loneliness and isolation can become a problem as people age.

For the elderly and unwell without a car or public transport, and distanced from GP surgeries, hospitals and local amenities, country living can become a serious challenge.

Even younger working people, attracted by the promise of more indoor and outdoor space, can find themselves spending hours commuting every day.

They may also end up spending more time in a car in order to get around, thereby creating more pollution and doing less exercise.
What's your view? Join the conversation on our Facebook page.
Personal choice

Prof Andy Jones, professor of public health at University of East Anglia, says research shows that urban residents do walk more than rural residents - to the shops and to work, for example - "but these don't translate to health benefits".

"In urban areas there is lots more going on, but more deprived people don't have access to the opportunities."

In the end where you live is a personal choice based on a number of different factors including jobs, financial means, health and lifestyle, says Prof Jones.

"If you're living in a place where you are isolated and don't have the finances to support yourself, it doesn't matter where you live.

"You can be just as isolated in a city centre as in a rural setting."

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If research suggesting that people who live close to major roads could have a higher risk of dementia has prompted thoughts of clean, traffic-free countryside living, then you are probably not alone. But what is the reality? Is a rural existence better for our health?

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Son dakika haberleri,köşe yazarları,en güncel haber ve son dakika haberleri,Türkiye'nin yeni açılış sayfası

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https://www.ch.ch/fr/

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http://worldpopulationhistory.org/urbanization-and-the-megacity/

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https://www.google.at/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/megacities/2011/04/04/the-problem-with-megacities/amp/

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http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/global-cities-prosperity-parity#

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/02/17/geography-in-the-news-the-growth-of-megacities/

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https://www.ft.com/content/6fb8a08e-0089-11e1-ba33-00144feabdc0

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page