This module will give students the opportunity to study in detail one of the main engines of social change in the modern period ? namely urbanisation. The causes of urbanisation will be assessed, and demographic patterns analysed. Thereafter, the course will focus on the social consequences of urbanisation. The traditional interpretation of the early industrial settlements of the south as `frontier societies? will be critically analysed, and cataclysmic events such as the Merthyr Rising will be examined. The more extensive and rapid urbanisation of the later nineteenth century will be studied, and seminars will discuss various dimensions of life in the towns ? public health, crime and morality, immigration, spatial divisions and leisure patterns for instance ? and different urban experiences will be compared. The emergence of a civic ideal and civic consciousness, and its effects on identity and concepts of community, will be analysed. The final part of the course will trace the urban experience in the twentieth century, by studying the depression, planning and housing reform, post war reconstruction and urban renewal. The content of the module will be placed within a conceptual framework provided by the development of urban history as an important sub-discipline over the last 40 years.

The module will offer students the opportunity to study the development of human society in Wales over a comparatively long time-frame, tracing the transition from a largely rural society to one dominated by urban settlements. Students will be able to study the social implications of this upheaval.