Industrial Revolution

Although we face unique urban problems in our day, many of the strengths and weaknesses of our present cities have been inherited directly from the nineteenth century.

The impact of the Industrial Revolution marked an entirely novel relationship between Western man and the organization of his cities, cities whose urban complex was composed of elements related within the context rules and a code practiced by inhabitant and planner alike. The urban system's relationship with the social systems (political power, learning, economy and religion) asserted itself upon the average citizen and thus integrated him into the structure of a given society.


In a given town, the urban order might have related the position of an individual's house to the cathedral and at the same time individualized him within a community along the ribbon of the street. This urban plan was a direct projection of the objectives of clergy, feudal lord or merchant guild.

This urban order was shattered by the radical transformation brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It was accompanied by a spontaneous and unprecedented urbanization overflowing the walls of Europe's ancient towns and the forming of new agglomerations, which not only changed the spatial organization which existed, but also the mentality of the city dweller himself.

The city dweller was unable to assimilate this dramatic urban revolution for he was now confronted with a spatial order devoid of its traditional richness of meaning, an organization derived solely from the economic cause of high demographic concentrations due to a capitalist-industrial production.





In 1845, Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England, in which he describes the conditions existing in Manchester, as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Following is an excerpt of that work:

"Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchen form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing".