1. URBANIZATION AND THE POOR: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE INDUSTRIALIZED WEST
UPA Package 3, Module 1
URBANIZATION AND THE POOR: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE INDUSTRIALIZED WEST

2. Urbanization Process General urbanization model
Concepts of urban, urbanization, city
Origin and growth of pre-industrial cities
Western experience in urbanization
Pre-industrial period: mercantilism
Industrialization and urbanization
Post industrial urbanization

3. Socio-spatial Structuring of Cities and its Impact on the Poor
Mercantilist port cities and mill towns
Full-scale industrialization and the formation of slums
Post-industrial restructuring and further marginalization of the poor

4. Approaches to Housing the Urban Poor
Co-location of workplace and residence in the mercantilist city
Privately provided company housing
Public housing
garden cities
new towns

5. Urbanization Urbanization Defined
Process whereby a place becomes urban, i.e., it ceases to be rural, experiences a large concentration of population that is changing from rural to urban way of life. (G. Chadwick)
Proportion of the total population concentrated in urban settlements. (P.M. Hauser)

6. Urban Place or City (G. Sjoberg)
As contrasted to a rural community or village, is characterized by
larger size
Greater density
Heterogenity and presence of significant number of full time specialists, literate groups, and inhabitants engaged in non-agricultural activities

7. Urban Place or City (T.A. Hartshorn)
A concentration of people with a distinctive way of life in terms of employment patterns and lifestyles;
With a high degree of specialized land uses;
Has a wide variety of social, economic and political institutions that coordinate the use of facilities and resources.

8. Urban Settlement Defined (J.H. Johnson)
Large population size and/or density
Dominant occupation is non-rural (NOT agriculture, fishery, forestry)
Large enough to have more than local influence
Provides links with similar settlements elsewhere
Urban Settlement Defined (J.H. Johnson)

9. The Pre-Industrial City
Pre-conditions
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a place may become a town/city if there is presence of:
a favorable resource base
an advanced technology
a complex social organization (G. Sjoberg, summarizing G. Childe)
Urbanization and the Poor: Perspectives from the Industrialized West

10. The Pre-Industrial City
Functions
Usually small, sometimes walled, serves as residence of political, religious and intellectual elite
secondarily as commercial center
storage for accumulated social surplus
protection of citizens against their enemies
Minimum specialization in land use; a single site serves multiple functions

11. Characteristics
Technology simple, meager facilities for credit and capital formation
Production of goods and services involves little specialization
Main economic unit is the guild
Pricing not standardized, haggling is the norm
Elite dominate government posts
Educational system serves the elite

12. Socio-spatial Structure
Social structure
Elite
Lower Classes
Outcastes
< Priests, administrators
< Urban commoners: craftsmen, bureaucratic personnel
< Lower than lower classes: perform tasks essential to the system but outside the pale of respectability

13. Socio-spatial Structure
Elite resided in or near the center
Lower classes fanned out toward periphery
Occupational and ethnic distinctions define allocation of places
Family is primary socializing agency; the chief determinant of one’s occupational position

14. Stages in the Urbaniztion of the Industrialized West
Urbanization during the mercantile period
Urbanization and the Industrial Revolution
early industrial phase
Later industrial phase
Urbanization in the post-industrial era
deindustrialization phase
economic restructuring

15. Mercantile Phase
Closes the pre-industrial age and transits to the industrial age
Transition to industrialization was slow due to
unwillingness of merchant capitalists to invest in manufacture (considered 4th best option behind trade, land and public works)
shortage of suitable areas where water power is available
The poor started to be more visible in the city

16. Characteristics Period of petty commodity production
Production system dominated by independent artisans and small masters
Landscape predominantly agricultural
Shortage of free-laboring population willing to work in new factories

17. Socio-spatial Structure
Social organization consists of three distinct classes:

18. Socio-spatial Structure
At the city center clustered churches, public buildings and the homes of the most prominent and well-to-do citizens.
Nearby lived lesser merchants and leading craftsmen whose residences intermingled with commercial buildings.
Principal focus of activities were the dock, the wharf, the countinghouse, and the warehouse.

19. Co-location of place of work and place of residence.
Stores or workshops are the same for artisans, small masters and even great merchants (work place on 1st floor; living quarters on 2nd)
Junior partners, journeymen and apprentices “lived in” as part of the employer’s family.
Some wage laborers lived close to the town center, accessible by foot.

20. Housing for Workers
Industrialists hired entire families and built housing for workers
Industrial housing was substantial, oriented about the mill
Industrialists took care to build proper social life among the workers by
Imposing social and moral order in boarding houses for female workers

21. Housing for Workers (continued)
nurturing the workers’ cultural and intellectual life
No housing provisions for casual day workers who lived in shanty towns at the outskirts
(See description of a mill town by Richard A. Walker)

22. Transition to Industrialization
Industrialization agglomeration made possible by conversion of water power to steam power.
Industrial location shifted from near waterfalls to coal fields.
Urban development now focused in “Coketowns”, (See Charles Dickens’ description)

23. The Industrial City Features of the Industrial Revolution
Changes in motive power from water to steam and finally to electricity
Advances in machine production and heavy engineering
Improved transport technology, especially shipbuilding and railway construction
Investment shift from working capital to fixed capital

24. Investment shift is facilitated by
Increasing engine speeds
Using specialist merchant houses for continental export trade
Wage-saving measures through machine substitution
Child labor

25. Industrialization and Urbanization
In general, industrialization begets urbanization
British, European: Industrialization was the catalyst for Urban Growth
‘Factories gave rise to towns’
New World (America): Industrialization followed urbanization
‘Towns gave rise to factories’

26. Factors that Hastened Urbanization (Europe)
Unprecedented population growth in the countryside
Mechanization, rising productivity, and labor-shedding in agriculture
City-ward migration
rural population as continuous supply of factory workers
rural population as source of domestic help

27. Factors that Hastened Urbanization (U.S.)
Agricultural revolution took place side by side with industrial revolution
Migration of redundant farm labor from the south to northern cities
Immigration of Europeans to “empty lands of the earth”

28. Socio-spatial Structure
Concentration of production and distribution in the city center or inner cities
Capital-intensive, materials-oriented industries located along rivers, canals, and near railway yards and sidings
Alteration of social relations of production

29. New Social Class Structure (Generic)
Capital
Labor
< Owns the means of production
< Propertyless and dependent on wages

30. Industrial Capitalist New Capitalist (From labor)
Later Social Class Structure (U.S.)
Industrial Capitalist
New Capitalist (From labor)
Labor
< Landlords Real estate operators Builders
< Workers, all types

31. Social Class Structure, Victorian England

32. Social Segregation led to Spatial Segregation
Higher social classes distanced themselves from the lower by
reorganizing the labor process, replacing the workshop systems with the factory system
separating work place form residence
Higher classes fled to the suburbs leaving behind the working classes in the central areas
Some indutrialists built workers’ barracks near their factories

33. Why the working class crowded in or near the city center
It is the locus of employment
They needed to be close to their work because
they cannot afford the cost of commuting
they have long and irregular work hours
They needed to be close to casual employment
The presence of other workers serves as social support network

34. Formation of Slums, contributory factors:
Working class housing became separate from their place of work
Workers were cut free by employers to fend for themselves
Poor immigrants crowded together near factories resulting in appalling housing conditions

35. The Industrial City
Free market in housing gave rise to housing providers among workers themselves who allowed congestion and poor sanitation to make quick money.
[See New York Slums in box]

36. Displacement of Urban Poor (U.K.)
Demolition of overcrowded rundown working class accommodation in central areas gave way to
Railway expansion
Dock development
Piecemeal and small-scale conversion to commercial development
General urban improvement, slum clearance, and street widening

37. Responses to Workers’ Housing (public sector)
“Gas-and-water socialism”: local government provision of clean drinking water, sewerage and drainage to prevent diseases.
Construction of high-rise workers tenements at the outskirts of the city.
Garden cities to house workers in suburban areas.
New towns to catch overspill population of metropolitan areas.

38. Responses to Workers’ Housing (non-government sector)
Charitable societies (Peabody Trust, Octavia Hill) rehoused slum dwellers in converted houses
Philanthropic capitalists’ built workers’ housing, e. g.
Pullman railway workers’ housing, Illinois, U.S.A.
Noisel-sur-Seine built by Menier, France
Agenta Park by Van Marken Yeast and Spirit Works, Delft, The Netherlands
Port Sunlight by the Lever Brothers, Liverpool, U.K.
Krupp workers’ housing in Essen, Germany

39. The Industrial Age of Urbanization: A Summary
The patterns of development during the industrial age are characterized by
Concentration of production and circulation in and around the central area with interwoven concentration of working class housing.
Rise of suburbanization, first by upper class residents and later by industries and working classes, produced giant conurbations or metropolitan areas.

40. The Late Industrial Age (Close of 20th Century)
Old central cities have declining shares in regional wealth and population.
Environmental pollution, traffic congestion, racial and ethnic discrimination, and financial crises afflict many urban cores.
Sharpened distinction between the rich and the poor as seen in gentrified neighborhoods adjacent to low-income-areas.

41. The Post-Industrial Age
The period of economic restructuring from the 1970s to the present is characterized by
declining industrial centers
plant closures and relocation to other regions and to Third World countries
deskilling / re-skilling of labour

42. Rise of the service economy (tertiary and quartenary)
preemincence of the professional and technical class
emergence of a new intellectual technology centering on information and information processing
Prominence of global cities

43. Socio-spatial Structure
Dominant urban form is the metropolitan urban region with redeveloped urban cores as nodes.
Former functions of old CBDs now distributed among suburban work complexes (technology parks, shopping malls).
Stylish and expensive residential developments near CBDs or far on the periphery.

44. New residential developments fully enclosed, separating the homogeneous community within from the more diverse population without.
Increasing distinction between the core city and outer areas
new colonization of the central city by professional and managerial classes quartered in low density single-family estates
the poor kept in high density public housing blocks in accelerating disrepair

45. Distinction between the affluent and the poor within the inner city, a juxtaposition of
new middle class enclaves in private housing with stringent security measures and
rundown high-rise tenements in public housing
Revitalization of urban core and inner cities results in gentrification, displacing the poor

46. Post-Industrial City, Impacts on the Poor
Recent redevelopment programs emphasize leveraging private investment and deemphasize provision of housing and services to low-income residents.
Growth primarily benefits highly skilled professionals and offers little for displaced workers in manufacturing and low-paid service sector jobs.
Restructuring and contraction of social benefits produce a widening income gap.