Weak market cities are cities that have experienced acute loss of purpose over the last generation, going from urban industrial giants to shadows of their former glory and pre-eminence. Their loss of viability and purpose in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s has undermined national economies, threatened social stability and exposed the fragility of the earth's eco-systems.

Across Europe, for 200 years, from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century, there was unprecedented urban growth and industrial expansion, centred around areas of easily exploitable natural resources such as coal, iron and water. A tradition of craft and trade alongside other historic assets, such as location on major river systems, facilitated new inventions and rapid industrialisation in particular towns, which rapidly expanded into cities. The extraction and conversion of natural resources such as water, wood, coal, iron and other metals, led to a manufacturing economy based on machine engineering, textiles, tools, shipbuilding and many other forms of mass production. This created a huge range of domestic as well as industrial goods. These new industrial cities were at the core of the industrial revolution and dominated European economies until the late 20th century.

The concentrations of new-found wealth in cities, the emergence of new professions and a fast-growing middle class led to a parallel growth in need and inequality that forced the creation of totally new systems of local government in 19th-century industrial cities. Urban growth led to major social and economic transformations, creating pressures on the environment, physical infrastructure, family life, social relations and governance that had no precedent. As a result of vast internal and international movements of people as well as goods and materials, industrial cities generated forms of squalor, disease, overcrowding and social dislocation previously unknown.

The four most direct consequences for industrial cities in Europe were:

• • intense concentrations of wealth in the hands of owners of property and production systems;

• • a steep rise in the manufacturing labour force;

• • the growth of political and social movements that shaped European and world democracy;

• • an increase in public services, civic activity and the expansion of universal education, transforming citizen engagement and human potential.