London’s population in 1900 was around 6 million, where did they all live?!

Question

I’ve seen maps of London at around this time and it is tiny compared to what it is now. Was the population density a lot higher? Did there used to be taller buildings? It seems strange to imagine so many people packed into such a small space. Ty

In: 7459

Answer 1

Not specific to London, but here in North America population densities were crazy high per square meter of city space vs what we have now. Like a factor of 20x higher.

Throughout the 1920s several of the ‘problematic’ city ordinances that urbanists like to hate on came into effect. They came into effect to effectively ban or break up many of the dwelling that were catering to the underclass. As an example, there were rooming houses dotted all over where one could rent a mattress on the floor for as little time as a night for what amounted to a couple bucks in today’s money. These houses would be stuffed to full of migrant workers and other assorted poor people. Basically they were dens of disease, crime and filth and poverty. They also represent the market providing shelter for the bottom of the barrel and for those who may not have the right skin tone to stay in better accommodations.

So, in parallel with the introduction of the car, the city passed zoning laws that forbade these places. Now there were max limits to how many people could stay in a dwelling. This shut down the boarding houses because the landlord can’t make a go of it without jacking rates. (If you can’t have 100 people paying a dollar per night, then you need to find one guy to pay 100 per night.)

There were zones that industrial activity could take place and they must be separated from where people lived forcing folks to travel longer distances from home to job. People use to have ‘servant’ quarters in their back yard, but banned.

This is kind of a poor explanation, but hopefully it gives some kind of a sense of what happened.

At the end of the day, some of the changes were needed to combat rampant social disorder, but many of the changes were pushed to the extreme in order to try and entirely eliminate the ‘undesirable’ parts of the population. The problem has been that we’ve now created a system that nobody but the rich can afford to live.