Industrialization and the Evolution of Urban Communities

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In the late 18th century, manufacturing inventions, the development of steam engines, and cotton industries led to industrialization and urban-based factories (Palen, 2014). These machines increased the demand for workers instead of decreasing the need of workers. However, improvements in transportation made it easy for people to travel and eventually workers moved to live outside the inner city. In addition, industries steadily moved to the suburbs due to the increased suburbanization of the labor force and a lower cost of production (Wilson, 2008). Therefore, with the decline of industrial work in the inner city, densely crowded areas of recently arrived migrants changed to communities abandoned by the working and middle classes. Many cities have watched the decline of …show more content…

With the increased globalization of financial activity, firms are frequently moving their production facilities to developing nations that have lower labor costs (Wilson, 2008). These global economic transformations have poorly affected the competitive position of many U.S. Rust Belt cities. For instance, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh perform poorly on employment growth (Wilson, 2008). Farewell to Factory Towns?, a documentary by filmmaker Maynard Seider investigates the effects of deindustrialization on North Adams, Massachusetts. The documentary showed the struggles of North Adams’ residents to build a workable economy after its major economic source disappeared. In addition, the documentary also focused on what happened to North Adams after the Sprague Electric Company moved its operations and left thousands of workers unemployed. Like North Adams, similar situations took place with the effect of deindustrialization in other former manufacturing cities throughout the

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