Also during industrial revolution there were lot more population centres. Lot of large factories were not near existing cities, but instead communities got build around them. Thus population started to concentrate, but was still more spread out. Now due to globalisation those factories are gone and thus the smaller towns around them have no more single big employer with all the downstream activity.

Issue is not so much moving from rural to urban, but hyper-urbanisation. Where we have not taken early enough action to build enough housing.