Why did towns and cities grow in the UK during the Industrial Revolution?
Jaylan Kreiger
2025-04-30 23:05:23
Count answers: 1
The United Kingdom is a useful illustration of the extent to which the Industrial Revolution impacted urban areas. In 1801 about one-fifth of the population of the United Kingdom lived in towns and cities of 10,000 or more inhabitants. By 1851 two-fifths were so urbanized, and, if smaller towns of 5,000 or more are included, as they were in the census of that year, more than half the population could be counted as urbanized. The world’s first industrial society had become its first truly urban society as well. The technological explosion that was the Industrial Revolution led to a momentous increase in the process of urbanization. Larger populations in small areas meant that the new factories could draw on a big pool of workers and that the larger labour force could be ever more specialized. Attracted by the promise of paid work, immigrants from rural areas flooded into cities, only to find that they were forced to live in crowded, polluted slums awash with refuse, disease, and rodents. By concentrating large numbers of workers and their families in cities, industrialism ultimately led to modern life being unquestionably urban life for a vast majority of the world’s population.
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