Industrialization and the Evolution of Urban Communities

In the late 18th century, manufacturing inventions, the development of steam engines, and cotton industries led to industrialization and urban-based factories (Palen, 2014). These machines increased the demand for workers instead of decreasing the need of workers. However, improvements in transportation made it easy for people to travel and eventually workers moved to live outside the inner city. In addition, industries steadily moved to the suburbs due to the increased suburbanization of the labor force and a lower cost of production (Wilson, 2008).
Therefore, with the decline of industrial work in the inner city, densely crowded areas of recently arrived migrants changed to communities abandoned by the working and middle classes. Many cities have watched the decline of

city-wide social services and high levels of unemployment that have reinforced the observation that city areas are unsafe and frightening places to live (Wilson, 2008). Between the 1980s and 2000, many working-class and middle-class urban residents continued to move to the suburbs (Wilson, 2008). With the exit of higher-income families, low-income people of color were left in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty. Therefore, poverty and unemployment remain noticeable in ghetto neighborhoods and many cities have less resources to help them. Before, factory jobs were available for previous generations without the requirement of formal education and they paid a decent living wage. However, factory jobs were replaced by the service sector jobs. Now, current residents of the hyperghetto are not matched to jobs in the new information and technology based sectors of the postindustrial economy (Lin, Mele 2013).
Since the mid-twentieth century, the relationship between innovation and worldwide rivalry has broken the fundamental organizations of the large scale manufacturing framework.

With the increased globalization of financial activity, firms are frequently moving their production facilities to developing nations that have lower labor costs (Wilson, 2008). These global economic transformations have poorly affected the competitive position of many U.S. Rust Belt cities. For instance, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh perform poorly on employment growth (Wilson, 2008).
Farewell to Factory Towns?, a documentary by filmmaker Maynard Seider investigates the effects of deindustrialization on North Adams, Massachusetts. The documentary showed the struggles of North Adams’ residents to build a workable economy after its major economic source disappeared. In addition, the documentary also focused on what happened to North Adams after the Sprague Electric Company moved its operations and left thousands of workers unemployed. Like North Adams, similar situations took place with the effect of deindustrialization in other former manufacturing cities throughout the

country.
In the same way, Chicago had over 10,000 manufacturing establishments functioned within the city in 1954. It employed a total of 616,000 and around half a million production workers. By 1982, the number of manufacturing industries was cut half. This decaying of the city’s industrial jobs was accompanied by large cuts in trade employment with over 120,000 jobs lost in retail and wholesale from 1963 to 1982 (Lin, Mele 2013).

Similarly, before the 1980s, Detroit was a center of industrial production. However, after free-trade agreements were established with less developed nations, Detroit-based manufacturers moved their production facilities to countries where wages were lower. As manufacturing jobs were eliminated, people moved away from the city, and those who stayed behind found themselves with lower paying jobs and difficulty finding work. Today, Detroit is known for its high concentration of poverty and unemployment (Barry, 2013).
Deindustrialization contributed greatly to the county's impoverishment. In order to save costs, manufacturers have done more than simply move. They have eliminated manufacturing jobs in the inner city causing unemployment to increase. In addition, making it hard for people to have a sustainable life.