Complete information on the important components of manmade environment?

There are several components of environment, which are created by man. Environment is a totality of natural plus man made environment, the latter including crop fields, cities, industrial space etc. these are the places, which are artificially made by man by planned manipulation. To understand the artificial nature of this environment we can take an example of man in a city.

Components of man-made environment

The city environment is created by man himself. One of the most important components of life, i.e., water is not taken from streams directly. It is filtered, purified, and then used for drinking and other municipal purposes. The metabolic wastes and garbage are not disposed off locally but are carried for treatment or for dumping to a remote place, away from the city. Food for the people in cities often comes from rural areas.

City atmosphere is generally more polluted than that of rural areas. Factories, vehicles and power plants contribute to pollution of the atmosphere. Residences of city people are made up of bricks and cement, not of mud with thatched roof. So, resources are continuously drawn from rural area for the buildings. The modes of transport are cars, buses, trains, etc., which consume large amounts of energy and pollute the atmosphere. Man has manipulated the environment in a way that suits his convenience and luxury.

Man-made environment results in consumption of excessive amount of materials and energy, necessitating care, supervision and management, ad often interferes with the natural environment. Man-made environment of developed countries has changed very much because an average man in developed countries has far more facilities than even the rich people in developing or underdeveloped countries. Let us look at some of these transformations.

Residential

Human settlement is essentially a total concept, which is applicable to a city, town or village. Each has a basic organization with its own social, economic and cultural aspects.

The basic requirements include housing, water and sanitation, transport, communication, food, energy, education and health. Shelter is one of the most important needs, with potable water and sanitation coming next.

In olden days, most human settlements used to be along riverbanks, which provided some basic facilities. Economy was agrarian and people mostly lived in rural areas. With the growth of trade and commerce, cities came into being. As population started growing, people started migrating towards towns and cities. Today, the most important cause for migration is rural poverty. Rural people come to towns for earning a livelihood. It may be mentioned here that man-land ratio in India is one of the lowest in the world. Though people migrate to urban areas to better their prospects in reality of life is harsh; many of them have to spend their entire life on pavements.

Bulk of our rural people live in very bad conditions, in make shift huts under leaky roofs often infested with insects and pests. In-house sanitation facilities are not available, so there is open-air defecation. Clean, piped water supply is absent. So is the sewer system. Open drains wherever they exist do not work because of poor maintenance. The atmosphere in the countryside, however, is not polluted because the traffic is not so heavy, and there are no factories, mills etc.

Population growth and migration of the poor from small towns and villages is a continuous process. Unable to meet the staggering demand for basic civic amenities, our cities have become teeming hovels of dirt, diseased and crime. Housing in urban area, mostly in big cities, is the biggest problem. Population pressure is felt in the cities with an ever-increasing number of pavement dwellers. This has resulted in the paradox of sky scrapers, coexisting with slums. The atmosphere is polluted by excessive traffic, factories, mills and domestic smoke.