What were the causes and effects of the growth of cities?

 Urbanization: the rapid growth of city population.  People went to cities to find jobs.  Industry & cities grew near water, used to transport goods.

Urban Growth:

1. Megalopolis. 2. Mass Transit. 3. Magnet for economic and social opportunities. 4. Pronounced class distinctions. - Inner & outer core 5. New frontier of opportunity for women. 6. Squalid living conditions for many. 7. Political machines. 8. Ethnic neighborhoods.

New Architectural Style New Use of Space New Class Diversity New Energy New Culture (“Melting Pot”) New Form of Classic “Rugged Individualism” New Levels of Crime, Violence, & Corruption Make a New Start New Symbols of Change & Progress The City as a New “Frontier?”

 Merchants built department stores that sold consumers all products in one store.  Activities in the city included; museums, music, circuses, & parks.

 Public transportation: electric streetcar, subway, & the Brooklyn Bridge.  Skyscrapers were built for many businesses.  Building “up” helped free up areas in the city and grow industry.

 The rich lived in homes on the outside of town called the suburbs.  The middle class lived in townhomes or row homes.  The poor were crammed in apartments or dirty tenements.

Tenement Slum Living

Lodgers Huddled Together

Tenement Slum Living

Struggling Immigrant Families

 Tenements were too close together  Very crowded conditions  Fires would destroy buildings  Crime rates were high  Disease spread due to closeness  Garbage was thrown out windows

“Dumbbell” Tenement

Dumbbell Tenement, NYC

 Cities started fire, police, public health, and sanitation departments.  Religious groups started clinics and the Salvation Army.  Jane Addams created settlement houses where poor could get food, clothing, and education.

Causes Effects

 Jobs, education, & a better life.better life.  Jews faced pogroms or religious violence in Russia.  Mexicans left Mexico because of political problems.  “New Immigrants” came from southern & eastern Europe.  Also Asia & the Pacific.

PushPull

 Most traveled on cramped ships in steerage or the bottom of the boat.  Europeans passed through Ellis Island (NY).  Asians passed through Angel Island (CA).  Most settled in cities with their ethnic groups with the same language and traditions.

“Little Italy”

Chinatown, NYC

 Assimilation—becoming apart of another culture. Assimilation  Immigrants tried to keep their own identities.  Children of immigrants assimilated quicker by learning English in school.  Immigrants worked in steel mills, meat- packing, railroads, clothing factories, and skyscrapers.

 Nativists wanted to preserve the country with only native-born citizens.  Felt immigrants took jobs, overcrowded cities, brought diseases, crime and would never be assimilated.  Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—outlawed Chinese immigrants in the West.

 1900’s push to educate both the poor & immigrants.  Compulsory Education—requiring children to attend school until a certain age.  6,000 High schools were built along with colleges offering free or low-cost education.  Interest in magazines, newspapers, & books. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn New York World: 1 st cartoon strip “Yellow Kid” Newspapers would exaggerate stories called Yellow Journalism to sell papers.