Urban settlement – from medieval town to modern city
History20th Century & TodayAges 14–15
Use it with your class: students open it from a link or a QR code, with no account needed.
Next in 20th Century & Today
A canvas diagram of a representative city, paired with a timeline from 1500 to 2020. As students drag the timeline marker, they see the medieval citadel and marketplace, then the factories, railway, and worker housing of the industrial city, and finally the central business district, ring road, and suburbs of the modern city; the world's urban population share also changes with the year. Click an event dot to read a short description of that period's urban functions and infrastructure.
Lesson: Urban settlement: history and present
What it shows
Cities change as the way people produce goods changes. The diagram shows one representative city from 1500 to 2020. The walled medieval town is a centre of crafts and trade around a square, a marketplace and a church. The Industrial Revolution adds factories, a railway and crowded worker housing; the city grows fast, with smoke, dirty water and disease as side effects. In the modern city, services fill the central business district, industry moves out, and ring roads, metro lines and suburbs spread outward. From 1950, a readout shows the world's urban population share rising from about 30% to 56% (UN data).
How to use
Press Play or drag Year shown on the timeline from 1500, stopping around 1600, 1880 and 2000 to describe each stage of the city. Use Filter by content group to show only the Medieval city, Industrial city or Modern city and compare the main function of each. Watch the urban population share after 1950, and ask students which features of their own town belong to which period.
Parameters you can change
- Year shown on the timeline 1500–2020 year
- Filter by content group All, Medieval city, Industrial city, Modern city
- Timeline playback speed 1–120 years/second
- Show event labels on the map
Questions to explore
- How did the main function of the city change between the medieval, industrial and modern periods?
- Why were the first factories built near the river and the railway?
- Around which year did the world's urban population overtake its rural population?
