Discuss the impact of industrialisation in Britain’s urbanisation. Give example of at least one urban area of England.
Britain Industrialisation’s Impact on Brtain’s Urbanisation:
(1) Industrialisation refers to the emergence of machine production, based on the use of inanimate power resources like steam or electricity.
(2) In most standard western textbook of sociology, we learn that even in the most advanced of traditional civilizations, most people were engaged in working on the land. The relatively low level of technological development did not permit more than a small minority to be freed from the chores of agricultural production.
(3) By contrast, prime feature of industrial societies today is that a large majority of the employed population work in factories, offices or shops rather than agriculture. Over 90 per cent of people in the west live in towns and cities, where most jobs are to be found and new job apportunities are created.
(4) Not surprisingly, therefore, we usually associate urbanisation with industrialisation. They often do occur together but not always so.
Example: For instance, in Britain the first society to undergo industrialisation, was also the earliest to move from being rural to a predominantly urban country.
(5) In 1800, well under 20 per cent of the population lived in towns or cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants. By 1900 this proportion had become 74 per cent. The capital city, London, was home to about 1.1 million people in 1800; it increased in size to a population of over 7 million by the start of the twentieth century.
(6) London was then by far the largest city ever seen in the world, a vast manufacturing, commercial and financial centre at the heart of a still expanding British empire.
