A Stage in the Development of the Industrial Town: A Case Study of Cardiff, 1845-75

Abstract

This study looks at the internal spatial reorganization of a town as it was transformed from a constrained pre-industrial kernel into a rapidly growing industrial metropolis. Starting from the premise that the intra-urban patterns of the Sjoberg and Burgess models represent extremes on a developmental continuum, an attempt is made to analyse the residential adaptations which occurred in the initial stages of change from the pre-industrial to the industrial pattern. The case study is the city of Cardiff, which showed phenomenal growth in the nineteenth century. This remarkable increase was related to the expansion of its port facilities, first for the iron industry, and then, and more importantly, for the coal export trade. The employment opportunities in dock and ancillary activities attracted a steady stream of migrants which could not be accommodated within the narrow confines of the existing medieval market town. Given this situation, what arrangement of residences emerged? The resultant distributions are examined using rateable values for 1846 and 1874-6, social data from the 1851 and 1871 Censuses, and contemporary health reports. The study shows that Cardiff was at a crossroads in terms of internal layout: it still retained some elements of its pre-industrial structure, but it was embarking on a process of suburban extension with a fringe of medium/low value artisan/working-class property. THE initial stimulus to this study was Schnore's observations on the evolution of the internal spatial structure of cities.' He attempted to characterize the changing ecological pattern of the city as it was transformed from a 'pre-industrial' to an 'industrial' or 'modern' state. This was achieved not by taking one city and monitoring its internal progress over time but by making a broad comparison between studies of many cities in North and South America, i.e. between cities in modern industrial and pre-industrial economies, and highlighting the main stages of an evolutionary sequence. To him 'the possibility that the traditional Latin American