urbanization does not mean country people come into a city but that the city extends out to the countryside

It is alleged that under the modernizing forces of the 1870s and 1880s , huge cities suddenly sprung up around the world that were more crowded than the cities before them.

It is true that they were much bigger than traditional cities - but they were also less not more crowded than earlier cities.

This myth allows urbanization is be set off as the straw dog opposite of the co-current trend of globalization.

We are told, correctly, that the steamship and pier , the railway and the bridge, the telegraph and the daily newspaper all extended the two-way reach of western civilization to the four corners of the globe.

Paris fashion ideas went deep into the interiors of Latin America as quickly as the coffee beans of that interior went out , en route to the cafes of Paris.

This "spreading out" of globalization is then contrasted vividly with the "gathering in" of vast populations into big cities --- but the facts do not support the telling.

Cities with large populations traditionally were very small in spatial terms.

Their primitive internal and external transport resources meant a city would fail to get cheap and abundant food or fuel to its urban working classes if it sprawled too much.

Remember that many of the nicest foods are perishable in the very short term (and even grain, oil and salted meat is perishable in the medium term) - so only rail was fast enough to bring sufficient fresh (and hence safe) vegetables, fruits, fish and meat from distant suppliers to feed a city of millions.

That meant they were extremely crowded ---despite having no buildings more than a few storeys high - and so roadways were barely a small carriage wide.

But the streetcar (along with ordinary railways and later the delivery truck) and together with the shift from local firewood to distant coal let poor urban people live far from both their work and the nearby countryside's food and fuel.

Cities could at long last grow outwards - and did so.

But not so much so that they no longer remained a very much more attractive (densely compact but big) market for goods and jobs than what the rural countryside's sprawl of small towns and farms could offer.

It might seem a small point.

But I raise it because we need to grasp the essential feature of modernization - its 'spreading-out-ness' - if we are to understand why Modernity rose up specifically to control the sprawl of life over its traditional borders.

Streetcars actually let the poor and the rich sections of the newly very much bigger cities interact more than they did when the cities were small.

Urban emigration fears meant then not just the middle class striving to control farm boys moving to the big city without parents.

It also means worrying about working class boys from the urban suburbs going to a downtown technical college and meeting their middle class daughters on the tram....