How did the Industrial Revolution change the urban environment in industrialising countries?
The Industrial Revolution was a period of time from the 18th to the 19th century and it brought many changes in society, politics, and especially in the urban environment. This short essay gives a brief description of changes in urban environment in industrialising countries after the Industrial Revolution.
To begin with, the great impact of industrialisation on the urban environment was the increase in population. Hundreds of thousands of citizens from the countryside moved to towns and cities, where they might easily find jobs to earn their living. According to Bulliet et al. (2009), London’s population grew from 500,000 in 1700 to 959,000 in 1800, and then continually increased to 2,363,000 in the next fifty years. In addition, in 35 years, the population of New York went up from 100,000 to 600,000. In some areas, there were megalopolises, such as “Great London, the English Midlands, central Belgium, and the Ruhr district of Germany” (p.559).
According to Bulliet et al. (2009), the growing population in the urban environment resulted in the worsening of the standards of living. For instance, when a lot of people who lived in the countryside migrated to towns and cities, there were not enough houses for them to live in. Some of them just shared small and cheap rooms, which were built by developers that could rent them. As more and more people resided in towns and cities, they tended to bring some bad behaviours and manners from the countryside. People threw their rubbish out of the windows causally to the gutters in the streets. Moreover, chemicals from factories were eventually poured into rivers by workers, making it not only hard for people to drink clean water, but also difficult to protect the quality of water resources. Furthermore, some people who from the countryside would burn coal, which made air pollution.
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The bad standards of living and the increase in pollution had bad consequences on people’s health. Industrialization added new ailments like rickets and cholera to existed pre-indusial diseases such as smallpox, dysentery, tuberculosis. As Bulliet et al.(2009) said, rickets was a bone disease which was lack of sunshine. And the reason why some people would have this disease was that there were a lot of factories, which produced smoke. Moreover, some people would have cholera because they might drink polluted water.
In conclusion, the Industrial Revolution brought three significant changes to the urban environment. First of all, the population grew a lot in the European countries. What is more, plenty of countryside dwellers moved to towns and cities and caused too many environmental issues because of their lifestyle. Obviously, some environmental pollution affected people’s health.
Word count: 439
Bibliography:
Builiet, R.W. 2009: The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History: Brief Fourth Edition, Boston: Houghton Milfin Company
