- Ecological condition of Baku atmosphere and its improvement ways    554 kb by    Kahramanova, Shahla & Namazov, Musaddin | shahlakahramanova@yandex.ru    Short Outline Air pollution in Baku is connected with an overflow of urban population, an absence of sanitary buffers between residential and industrial zones and the placing of 60% of the country's industry in it. Cars also cause damage to the city ecology. Abstract Baku is one of the most polluted cities on our planet. First of all atmospheric air pollution in Baku is connected with an overflow of urban population, and also placing of 60-65 % of the country industry in it. Today according to official sources there are 3.5 million people or 50 % of Azerbaijan population in Baku at territory of 1920 km2. Major factors of city atmospheric air pollution are outdated equipment and technology, combustion high-sulphur residual oil instead of scarce gas popping of superfluous gas on offshore and coastal fields, etc. The highest atmospheric pollution by carbon oxide is observed in the central industrial zone of the city where the petroleum refineries are placed and there are no sanitary buffers between residential and industrial zones. However, the cars which quantity according to official sources is about 540 thousand (60-65 % of all vehicles in Azerbaijan) cause the most substantial damage to the city ecology. Today the transport infrastructure of Baku is not able to provide normal work of motor transport. 80 % of roads is outdated, there are no enough traffic intersections, underground garages, pedestrian crossings, etc. Major cause of excessive loading of roads in Baku is following: the building density of the city is higher in 2,5 time, the density of road network is low at 7-15 time in comparison with European cities. In fact, sidewalks of the city have turned to parking places. All this has led to formation of traffic congestions on the city streets and as result to increase in atmospheric emissions. According to estimation, only motor transport in Baku vents to atmosphere about 1 million tons of harmful emissions per annum, 600 thousand tons from them is carbon monoxide. For improvement of the city ecological situation and air purification it is necessary to provide full liquidation of the oil-field economy and oil storages in the territory of Baku proper, relocation of especially harmful manufactures out of the residential zone, creation of a sanitary buffer around of the harmful enterprises, re-equipment and providing air pollution control measures in the enterprises, improvement and construction of the new modern roads adequating to the international and local standards, to increase a share of electrotransport in passenger transportations, to create system of parkings, etc. Keywords air pollution, ecology, Baku, vehicles Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper