What?: The movement of people from farms to the cities.
Where?: England, during the Industrial Revolution. It is now seen in many nations around the world.
When?: The early river valley civilizations, the early 1800’s and modern day.
Who?: Unskilled laborers
Why?: The search for jobs to pay feed their families. (Lookin' for jobs in the city)
How?:Unskilled laborers move from rural areas to cities and congregate near factories and other locations with plentiful jobs.
Importance:
1) In the case of England during the Industrial Revolution, urbanization created a large pool of workers for the growing number of factories.
2) Today in the 3rd World urbanization is leading to unemployment as unskilled workers can no longer find factory jobs resulting in poverty and malnutrition.
Results:
1) Cities are often ill prepared for the large growth in population leading to poor living conditions and inadequate services (schools, police, sanitation)
2) The large supply of unskilled workers leads to competition for low wage jobs.
Related Terms: 1) Sanitation, 2) Unskilled labor, 3) Population density