Urbanization’s Impact on Family and City Life in Britain
Urbanization’s Impact on Family Structure
The function and the shape of the family were completely transformed by life in the industrial city. Ties between members of households loosened, and among the working class, the institution of marriage tended to break down.
Women’s Changing Roles
- Women of the upper and middle classes in Britain faced increasingly higher levels of isolation, although their lives were made easier by domestic maids who cooked, cleaned, and cared for young children on low wages.
- Women who worked for wages had some control over their lives, particularly among the lower social classes. However, many social reformers felt that the family as an institution had broken down and needed to be saved or reconstructed by pushing these women back into the home.
Individualism and the Urban Space
The city encouraged a new spirit of individualism among both men and women and freedom from the collective values that were a feature of the smaller rural communities. But men and women did not have equal access to this new urban space. As women lost their industrial jobs and conservative people protested against their presence in public spaces, women were forced to withdraw into their homes.
- The public space became increasingly a male preserve, and the domestic sphere was seen as the proper place for women.
- Gradually, women participated in political movements for suffrage that demanded the right to vote for women or for married women’s rights to property.
- By the twentieth century, the urban family had been transformed yet again, partly by the experience of the valuable wartime work done by women, who were employed in large numbers to meet war demands. The family now consisted of much smaller units.
- Above all, the family became the heart of a new market – of goods and services, and of ideas.
Reforming the Industrial City: London’s Transformation
If the new industrial city provided opportunities for mass work, it also raised the problem of mass leisure on Sundays and other common holidays. A variety of steps were taken to clean up London.
- Attempts were made to decongest localities, green the open spaces, reduce pollution, and landscape the city.
- Large blocks of apartments were built, similar to those in Berlin and New York – cities that had similar housing problems.
- Rent control was introduced in Britain during the First World War to ease the impact of a severe housing shortage.
The Garden City Movement
The congestion in the nineteenth-century industrial city also led to a desire for clean country air.
- Demands were made for new ‘lungs’ for the city, and some attempts were made to bridge the difference between city and countryside through such ideas as the Green Belt around London.
- Architect and planner Ebenezer Howard developed the principle of the Garden City, a pleasant space full of plants and trees, where people would both live and work.
- Following Howard’s ideas, Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker designed the garden city of New Earswick. There were common garden spaces, beautiful views, and great attention to detail.
- In the end, only well-off workers could afford these houses.
Housing the Working Class
Between the two World Wars (1919-39), the responsibility for housing the working classes was accepted by the British state, and a million houses, most of them single-family cottages, were built by local authorities. Better-planned suburbs and a good railway network enabled large numbers to live outside central London and travel to work.