[bluGill]

People lived in cities because they couldn't find a farm. Anyone who had a farm didn't leave because you controlled your survival. 95% of the people (numbers varied but this is good enough) lived on a farm. Cities were full of diseases and they didn't have good jobs.

Of course what you read in history is from the rich point of view. If you had wealth (slaves back on the farm) city life was really good.

[taffer]

You have it the wrong way round: In the US the slave owners lived on the farms. The bustling cities were in the free states.

[bluGill]

By the time the US started the industrial revolution was starting and the rules were changing.

[trgn]

that seems like a reductive truth in the other direction, i'd even say it's largely false.

the wealth explosion in the high middle ages and significant rise in standard of living was fully accompanied by (and maybe precisely because of) the flourishing of urbanity as well. there were great jobs in the city. proto industry and cottage industry, specialized trades, guilds, ... would you rather be a farmer, subject to the whims of your lord and the weather, or instead weave cloth at a more individualized pace, as a band of brothers?

that city was also a much more calm and verdant atmosphere than we now image as well. gardens, high intensity cultivation, markets, plazzas, all within city walls, not to mention a very accessible country side outside in walking distance ... no noise pollution from cars. i think people tend to forget this aspect a lot more, because they imagine the crowded industrial city. that machine-environment wasnt the norm for the hundreds of years preceding it. we should image bruges in 1370 here as the norm, not manchester in 1870.

sure, the city could be filthy, but farmlife was miserable in its own ways. and sanitation was bad in the city, it was just as bad as on the farmstead.

[Jensson]

Serfdom existed to prevent peasants from leaving those farms, people wanted to move to cities were wages and jobs were better but nobility wanted to force them to stay on those farms.

[bluGill]

Serfdom existed as a step above slavery. The city may have been better for serfs but for the free farmer (if any) the farm was better. There is a lot of 'grass is greener' in the idea that the city was better for many farmers and so they may not have liked what the city was really like.

[jollyllama]

Before the modern era, people died like flies in cities; they were population sinks.