Coping with City Growth during the British Industrial Revolution

This book assesses Britain's handling of city growth during the First Industrial Revolution.

Jeffrey G. Williamson (Author)

9780521893886, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 May 2002

368 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

"...no one can doubt the book's value in raising crucial questions about the British urban experience." Robert L. Fishman, Albion

Coping with City Growth assesses Britain's handling of city growth during the First Industrial Revolution by combining the tools used by Third World analysts with the archival attention and eclectic style of the economic historian. What emerges is an exciting and provocative accounts that have long occupied problem development economists: urban unemployment, underemployment, and the alleged failure of city labour markets to absorb the flood of rural emigrants; the persistent influx of newcomers, which makes it difficult for municipal planners to improve the quality of social overhead; the crowding of migrants into densely packed urban slums with few, if any, social services; and rising density and city size which augment pollution while lowering the quality of the urban environment.

List of tables
List of figures
Acknowledgments
1. Coping with city growth, past and present
2. The urban demographic transition: births, deaths, and immigration
3. Migrant selectivity, brain drain, and human capital transfers
4. The demand for labor and immigrant absorption off the farm
5. Absorbing the city immigrants
6. The impact of the Irish on British labor markets
7. Did British labor markets fail during the industrial revolutions?
8. Did Britain's cities grow too fast?
9. City housing, density, disamenities, and death
10. Did Britain underinvest in its cities? References
Index.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]