solved Reply: Has automation, mechanization, urbanization, transportation, etc. changed life for

Reply:

Has automation, mechanization, urbanization, transportation, etc. changed life for the better in cities of the globe then and today?
In which ways – yes, in which ways – not? Were/are there alternatives? 

Take a look at J.M.W. Turner’s watercolor of Dudley in Worcestershire (see material at the bottom of this page)

Then, watch PBS Queen Victoria’s Empire – Engines of Change (from start to about minute 14, and then again from minute 27 to minute 29 of the nearly one hour video, that is part 1 of a several part documentary): https://youtu.be/ickSPXVIJVY (Links to an external site.)

Also, take a closer look at the text (on workers and factory conditions), then engage here…
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J. M. W. TURNER, DUDLEY, WORCESTERSHIRE, 1832In his 1832 watercolor of Dudley, Worcestershire, a city of about 23,000 in 1831 in the heart of Britain’s industrial Black Country, British painter J. M. W. Turner shows the transformation of old towns and traditional landscapes wrought by the industrial revolution. In the foreground on one of the canals that crisscrossed this region, barges laden with cargo—typically coal for fuel, iron ore for smelting, and lime for flux, all plentiful in the region and used in the production of iron—dock for unloading and wait to receive goods from factories along the banks. The vessel at the right carries hoops of sheet iron destined for one of Dudley’s finishing shops. The numerous mills’ chimneys and coal-fired hearths produce dense clouds of polluting smoke that dim the city and encrust it with soot. On the right, a white and orange glow bursts from iron furnaces. In the background, the church steeples and battlements of a ruined castle rise into the moonlit sky, indicating how the old town has had to adapt to the new realities of modern industry, where work never seems to stop. Charles Dickens (1812–1870), who visited the region during the 1830s, would describe it as “cheerless,” a “mournful place” filled with “tall chimneys, crowding on each other and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form,” chimneys that “pour out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air.”
Overwhelmed by these surroundings, newcomers to the cities tended to settle in areas where they knew someone else. Whole neighborhoods grew up populated by people who had come from the same rural region. This tendency led to a sense of segregation and separate identities within the cities, as people familiar with one another clustered together.
Different neighborhoods
Few neighborhoods were planned. Indeed, the expansion of most cities became increasingly uncontrolled. The rampant growth created far more problems for the working class than for anyone else. The middle classes, for example, most likely lived in lower-floor apartments in the more desirable sections of town and had the benefit of some running water. They also could afford to employ servants. It was in the working-class sections and poverty-stricken areas that the social ills and squalor of the age reached their worst levels. As the manufacturer and socialist Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) described, “The houses are packed from cellar to attic and they are as dirty inside as outside.” In the Irish quarter of London, as many as 38 people crowded into small buildings down narrow alleys where the walls were crumbling, and “piles of refuse and ashes lie all over the place and the slops thrown out into the street collect in pools which emit a foul stench.” In the bad quarters lived “the poorest of the poor. Here the worst-paid workers rub shoulders with thieves, rogues, and prostitutes.”
Conditions where poor workers lived.
Figure 17.10, a mid-nineteenth-century woodcut by the French artist Gustave Doré (1832–1883), also portrays the squalor and crowding of a London slum. In the center, a young child carries a baby, perhaps because her mother is working. Around her in the alley, dejected men, women, and children stand listlessly. Dark tenements tower over them, and laundry sags from clotheslines. Though criticized for overdramatizing the plight of the poor, Doré effectively conveys the anguish of unemployment, poverty, and crowding marring this rich city. As this and works by novelists such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Frances Trollope, and Honoré de Balzac showed, the burgeoning cities were fostering a whole set of social concerns.

FIGURE 17.10
Gustave Doré, A London Slum, mid-nineteenth centuryDark, crowded urban areas such as the district shown in this woodcut were home to innumerable poor workers and other impoverished individuals.
Worrying About Urban Society: Rising Crime
One of those social concerns centered on patterns of criminal behavior. People in the upper classes complained about crime and the social disorder it implied. Had cities become hotbeds of crime, as some middle-class observers claimed, or were these critics simply overly worried about their own safety and well-being?
Crime certainly plagued people in the West long before the industrial revolution. In rural areas, along highways, and in the preindustrial cities of Europe, crimes ranging from pickpocketing to murder occurred all too frequently. Professional thieves had reportedly run rampant in Germany, England, and France in past centuries.
In the early stages of industrialization, theft and robbery in particular did rise in the cities. Crowds provided prime opportunities for pickpockets. In urban taverns and dance halls, men sometimes fell into violent brawling, sometimes over women. In these establishments, alcohol flowed freely and almost certainly played a role in outbreaks of fighting. The widening gaps between rich and poor and the desperation of living in hard times also made tempers short. Finally, the anonymity of life in the city and the tempting array of luxury items to steal made crime harder to resist.
Crime and law enforcement
Whether justified by the realities of more crime or not, the specter of urban crime and fear of disorder prompted new efforts to improve law enforcement. In 1829, under the leadership of Robert Peel, Parliament passed a law establishing the first modern police force in London. Peel’s new police, called “Bobbies” in his honor, emphasized regular patrols by uniformed officers as a way to deter crime and present a visual image of security. Both the middle and the working classes accepted the Bobbies, in part because the police were not allowed to be engaged for political purposes such as domestic espionage, and in part, because people saw them as the first line of defense against all disorder. By the early 1830s, there were some 3,000 uniformed officers in the force.
The frightening consequences of rapid urbanization were becoming all too apparent. Year by year, the cities grew more densely packed and seemingly more dangerous. In bad times, they teemed with desperate people hoping to find jobs; in good times, they drew even more people eager to take advantage of the available work and other opportunities. Contemporaries associated the cities with overcrowding, filth, crime, moral degeneracy, and an unruly working class. “They [the working class] live precisely like brutes … they eat, drink, breed, work and die,” complained a middle-class British observer in 1850. “The richer and more intelligent classes are obliged to guard them with police.” Perhaps most disturbing, however, were the disease and death that haunted urban centers.
DOCUMENT 17.3 A Middle-Class Reformer Describes Workers’ Housing
During the first half of the nineteenth century, most urban workers gained little more than just enough to get by. Their dwellings reflected their precarious existence. The following is a description of housing in Nantes, France, during the 1830s.
If you want to know how he [the poorer worker] lives, go—for example—to the Rue des Fumiers which is almost entirely inhabited by this class of worker. Pass through one of the drain-like openings, below street level, that lead to these filthy dwellings, but remember to stoop as you enter. One must have gone down into these alleys where the atmosphere is as damp and cold as a cellar; one must have known what it is like to feel one’s foot slip on the polluted ground and to fear a stumble into the filth: to realize the painful impression that one receives on entering the homes of these unfortunate workers. Below street-level, on each side of the passage, there is a large gloomy cold room. Foul water oozes out of the walls. Air reaches the room through a sort of semi-circular window which is two feet high at its greatest elevation. Go in—if the fetid smell that assails you does not make you recoil. Take care, for the floor, is uneven, unpaved, and untiled—or if there are tiles, they are covered with so much dirt that they cannot be seen. And then you will see two or three rickety beds fitted to one side because the cords that bind them to the worm-eaten legs have themselves decayed. Look at the contents of the bed—a mattress; a tattered blanket of rags (seldom washed since there is only one); sheets sometimes; and a pillow sometimes. No wardrobes are needed in these homes. Often a weaver’s loom and a spinning wheel complete the furniture. There is no fire in the winter. No sunlight penetrates [by day], while at night a tallow candle is lit. Here men work for fourteen hours [a day].
Document From: Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes, Documents of European Economic History, vol. 1 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968), pp. 494–495.
Section, and images from Sherman, Dennis. The West in the World, Combined Edition, Vol. 5. McGraw-Hill, 2015. 536-537