The first urban explosion

Chapter One set out the idea of a jigsaw city, the challenge of piecing together many distinct and moving parts defying planned, orderly transitions. Our urban history, detailed in this chapter, illustrates this rough and ready pattern of development. Between 1801 and 1901 Britain experienced an amazing population shift that would be impossible to orchestrate. The total population quadrupled, going from 9 million to 36 million, and the balance between the urban and rural populations was dramatically reversed. At the start of the century, only 20% of people lived in urban areas; by the end of the century, that figure was nearer 90%, making Britain the most urbanised country in the world. In their many thousands every year, workers and their families were pushed off the land by innovations in agricultural management, production and cultivation and simultaneously pulled into London and the rapidly expanding towns of the North and Midlands by labour-intensive industries.

Between 1801 and 1851 the most remarkable increases were found in these industrial towns. The already large populations of Birmingham and Leeds more than doubled. The population of Manchester tripled, Liverpool and Sheffield quadrupled and Bradford increased eightfold. The populations of spa towns and coastal resorts experienced a parallel growth, as the burgeoning middle classes sought to escape the urban squalor and privation that inevitably followed in the wake of such population increases. The flight of prosperous households from the poverty and harshness of city life is a theme that recurs throughout this book.

By 1851, an irreversible change had occurred in the social and economic structure of the country. Over 50% of the still-expanding population had become urbanised, half of whom were concentrated in the 10 urban areas with populations of more than 100,000. Table 2.1 illustrates the explosive rate at which the urban population expanded as waves of migrants from the countryside, and later Ireland, arrived in search of work in the new trades and factories.