The below summaries complete an assignment for a Distance Learning class. For more details, please see the ILT Web Site .
Jewel A. Mickens
Dustin K. Mithaug
Cecilia M. Murtagh
Scott R. Wickham
First European area to be urbanized was Holland
In 1800, 2.5% people resided in cities ==> In 1985, 41% resided in cities
Profound growth in public transportation
20th century 3rd world industrialization
NYC lost 11% of jobs between 1969 and 1975
Rise of cities linked with fossil fuels and industrialization
Ponting shuns the development of cities.
Urbanization increases the amount of poverty among people.
Cities do not maintain the amount of jobs needed for its inhabitants causing a major setback and escalating poverty.
The city in modern times epitomizes the history of man's ability to overwhelm the natural resources that surround him. 
Ponting points out the evolution of the current city state, taking us from the hunter and gathering times through the modern metropolis. He discusses the impact of the development and why the development occurred the way that it did. Industrialization and improved agricultural techniques allowed large amounts of people to move to metropolitan areas and work for wages to buy their food. Streetcars, cable cars and the underground railway allowed cities to sprawl over large ground and house many more people.
This change also brought about a shift of industrial companies to move out of the town centers and service industries to move in to take their place. With all of these adjustments, human's did not take into account what effect their presence would have on the land that they were occupying. As a result of the overcrowding, higher mortality rates, pollution, economic decline, and social problems. Ponting does not view the modern metropolis as a marvel, but rather as a haven for all of the problems currently faced by our society.
Later, the city's inhabitants moved on the outskirts developing suburbs. This proved to be a progressive move for technology because faster transportation was needed and services were required in the area for those who did not travel to urban areas on a daily basis. This helped increase the amount of jobs of the labor market.
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possesses but themselves.
- Adam Smith
Most people had few possessions and suffered in terrible conditions.
High price of modern comfort
Vast increase in consumption of world's limited energy resources and raw material
In 1780, 8,000 abandoned children at birth
Enlargement of technology.
A rise in the use of technological gadgets in the home.
More women in the labor market.
A very rewarding era.
Increase in travel.
Less handmade products both good and bad.
Consumption in cities and suburbs.
In this chapter, he discusses the history of the elite and how they consistently tried to show their wealth. The history of the gaining of wealth is encompasses the finding and exploiting of the natural resources. How finding one natural resource, like plastic lead to the invention of thousands of consumer durables. 
Improved techniques in manufacturing brought luxury items to the common populace. For example the manufacturing of the car through the assembly line lowered costs on the vehicle to a point where many people could afford it. This lead to having to maintain the car, which lead to a new service industry of maintenance, and another exploitation of natural resources oil and rubber. This leads to his point that big cities are now being created using highways instead of rail and that more people live by cars. These cars pollute, and then we are back in the same cycle of destroying our environment and the natural decline of our race.
He also furthers the argument that industrialization consolidates the wealth into the hands of the few. The phenomena was escalated by having empires started in Europe and take over countries in the Third World. 
He describes the exploitation of the people from the Third World and how they have not benefited from the vast technological advances of the first world. Organizations that lend to the Third World to 'assist' them in improving their states have only hurt the people who have not the infrastructure nor the capital available to pay back the interest on these debts less to say the capital itself. In closing, he argues that the increasing use of technology has not fairly distributed the worlds wealth.
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