City change on revolution eras

How understanding the deep changes that led the industrial revolution to be as disruptive as it was, will help us understand changes within the digital era.

We will need to place ourselves in the pre-industrial revolution world to understand what changed when the industrialized world came to be and understand how the digital era is fundamentally reshaping the way we live within our habitat: the city.

Agricultural work is the base of the pre-industrial revolution economy, approximately 80% of the population worked on land-related jobs and were born into the social class they were most likely to stay for the rest of their life. By the 1800s, people used to live near where they acquired food and clothing, in most cases, they cultivated and commercialized it themselves, never owning a single item that was made outside of their communities.

The industrial revolution emerged, and many technological advances developed during this period, characterized by invention and productivity. Cities boomed during this period, and the main aspect that made them diverse, dense, and centralized places was a fundamental change in transport and communication.

New transport technologies allowed people to move faster and farther: it was easier to trade and sell anything produced, it meant new ways to communicate within nearby communities and the world. Because of this advances urbanization soared around railway hubs and stations, as people looked for convenience and the new ways of transport offered and the closeness to the sources of work.

The modern idea of the city originated based on the model of the growing city of the industrial revolution and although important cities had developed in the past there was just a handful of them, not even to mention they belonged to certain social classes. The new communication methods led to important changes in the base of how we understand our world, it led to a more globalized view of it.

It was a progressive and radical change as we compare how the average person lived before the revolution to how an average person lived by the 1700s, 1400s, and 1200s, approximately 800 years earlier.

This unexpected growth in the population of cities also brought a series of problems of public health and safety that were challenging to the upcoming generation.

By 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. During the past 50 years, we have seen a rapid increase in rates of urbanization across the world. This unexpected growth in the population of cities also brought a series of problems of public health and safety that were challenging to former generations. But, are these tendencies likely to continue? The answer is yes, and this has a lot to do with the invention and standardization of the internet. Through constant improvements in health and education, it was possible to upgrade social conditions, as studies show that population urbanizes as they tend to get richer and have higher living standards.

Cities and the internet are alike, as they are both places where social interactions both planned and spontaneous happen all the time*, this exchange is what took us to what we are today as a society, technology makes possible new connections to other people, enhancing our capacity to diversify our knowledge and creativity, which results in even more technology and advances.

As people are drawn to comfort and the freedom the internet gives, the workforce moves towards automatization as it did before, and many jobs in the manual area are displaced. Services apps as delivery and uber as well as activities like online shopping, games, and streaming services, are shaping the way we communicate, transport and live in cities, as well as the industrial revolution did, aside approximately 60% of the world’s population is an active user of the internet as of today.

The effect of social media on the retail world per example, where once street-level shops were a definitive and essential component to vibrant city life, today, as anyone can have a business set up online very easily, it’s becoming harder to justify the cost of rent for emerging businesses. The possibility of bigger audiences that social media grants make possible for small businesses to sustain themselves until they want or need to do otherwise.

This doesn’t mean we are leading an era of nonexistent physical interactions. We use the internet to replace necessary activities, such as grocery shopping while social activities like restaurants and cafes are detached from the consumption component and, are inclined towards the overall user-experience they offer, younger audiences are attracted to such places, as well as they are the ones that are more connected with social media and the internet.

All these changes will lead to new challenges to be faced, cities and urban settlements will progress and adapt to the new conditions as they did in the past. As communication and transport are important factors to determine the way we live, it is reinforced in history that we tend to densify as these factors improve and this isn’t a cause-effect relationship. Density, technological advancements, economic progress as well as many other factors are deeply connected to each other as the forces and studies they are bound to, will help us understand where are we heading to.

*Report made by the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social affairs.

*This is a quote of an article I read on one of my favorite blogs on the internet, Sidewalk labs, They write amazing articles with so much expertise that has helped me gain insight on urban studies, which I’m starting a career on. If you like this kind of content, you should check out their blog.

*I found a lot of useful data to hold up in this study on Urbanization by Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie from our world in data organization.