Industrial Revolution and New Cities

• Industrial economies required large pools of labor, transportation networks, physical infrastructure of factories, warehouses, stores, and offices and the consumer market provided by cities

• As industrialization spread urbanization increased. The higher wages and greater variety of opportunities in urban labor markets attracted migrants causing the countryside to empty

• In Europe, the demographic transition caused a rapid growth in population as death rates dropped dramatically. This growth provided a massive increase in the labor supply further boosting urbanization not only in Europe but in Australia, South Africa, Canada and the United States as emigration spread industrialization and urbanization to the world system

World Cities with Key Roles

• At the top of a global urban system some cities experienced growth largely as a result of the pier roles as key nodes in the world economy

• World cities are the control centers for the flowers of information, cultural products, and finance that collectively sustain the economic cultural globalization of the world

• The globalization of the economy has resulted in global urban systems in which the key roles of world cities are concerned with transnational corporate organization, international banking and finance, super national government and the work of international agencies