Urbanisation in the Usa

URBANISATION:
An increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas compared to rural areas.[pic 1]

Urbanisation in the USA:

Causes:

Urbanisation of the USA has occurred as it has become more developed. Currently, 82.4% of people live in urban areas in USA which accounts for around 250 million people, 4% of them live in New York.

One cause for urbanisation is that farms became more mechanised. As you can see in the graph on the right the US had more people living in rural areas than urban ones. However, as you can see by the trend from 1900 to 2010 the percentage of people living in urban areas has doubled. This is because in 1898 the first tractor was created in Clayton County, Iowa, USA. This lead to a drastic change in farming methods with previously traditional horses being replaced by these stronger better tractors. This meant many farmers were forced to move away into the cities to find work. By 1930 the percentage of people working in the agricultural industry had halved. By this time there were also nearly 1 million tractors in use, to replace 3 million horses.[pic 2]

By 1916 more people were living in urban areas than rural ones. This was because of industrialisation in the cities. New York was very important in this industrialisation and this was because it was situated on the east coast of America and therefore had very good transport links to Europe and the rest of the world. Unlike the pre-Civil War economy, this new one was dependent on raw materials from around the world and it sold goods in global markets.  New York already had a good port when it previously traded fur with the rest of the world so this then became the main city in the country. It also had the Erie Canal which gave it links to the rest of the country as well. This meant people came to New York in search of economic opportunities in a different type of sector and working in secondary and tertiary industries including in commerce or maybe even helping to build many of the famous iconic buildings that stand in New York such as the Empire State Building or Chrysler Building.

Another reason for this was migration from the south. These were predominately African-Americans moving from states such as Texas and Virginia, their target was the big cities and mainly New York and Chicago as these were where they could find the most job opportunities. New York had an increase of over 30% to the amount of African-Americans. The primary push factors for migration were segregation, increase in racism, the widespread violence of lynching (nearly 3,500 African-Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968[9]), and lack of opportunities in the South. In the North, they could find better schools and adult men could vote (joined by women after 1920). Burgeoning industries created job opportunities and urban-industrial jobs became much more popular. Work in the U.S. cities was attractive because the wages were higher than in Europe, but the price of living was often the same or lower.[pic 3]