The Boston Suburb. Social Sciences Coursework Paper

The Boston Suburb
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For much of the U.S., the process of suburbanization was hastened by increased economic growth brought about by increased industrialization. As industries grew and production increased, more manpower became necessary, and hence, more people teemed into various industrial towns in search of jobs. Settlements sprung up and with them, various forms of transport and transportation networks too. For Boston, the development of its transport network also followed almost the same script. The city has grown from one of a quarter a million people in the 1870s to over 4 million today. However, the changes have been greatly influenced by the finer changes in the evolution of its transportation network.
It is worth noting that Boston was the window through which the outside world could venture into the New World that was the U.S. As a result, it experienced a lot of challenges as well as development, way earlier than most of the other cities in the country. Some of the very first industries were also established in Boston. The power loom was installed as early as 1813 by the Boston Manufacturing Company, for the purposes of processing textile (Riggs, 2015). In the late 1800s, Boston was a crowded place, with its narrow streets struggling to contain the quickly growing population.
There developed the need for alternative forms of transport for the city. With the discovery of the motor engine, Boston became the very first city in the U.S. to diversify its transportation systems, with a lot of investment being on the rail system. It was even the first in the usage of the steam trolley (Darity, 2008). This was quite a modest beginning for the city’s great transportation history. The growth of the suburbs in Boston, therefore, became closely related to the railroad system, as job seekers and property developer...