Wikipedia is also your friend. Using it as a resource, I was able to draw these connections: Shoemaking ==> Cottage Industry ==> Urbanization. It seems reasonable to believe that at least some farmers would know something of shoemaking and even actually making shoes.
Also, the reasons for Urbanization are complex; not all reasons that drove some people to the cities were good ones.
From http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/53n2a3.pdf: In 1851 the term ‘farm’ was used [by the Census Office] to mean an agricultural holding from which the occupier derived their primary employment and the term ‘farmer’ was restricted to those whose primary occupation was farming. ... Every householder was issued with a household schedule to complete together with an accompanying set of instructions. Under the heading ‘INSTRUCTIONS for filling up the Column headed “RANK PROFESSION, or OCCUPATION”’, there were a number of notes pertaining to specific occupational groups. ... In other words only those who described themselves as ‘farmers’ were requested to return the acreage of their holding and the numbers of in and out-door labourers. There was no request for other occupiers of agricultural land to supply this information. ... But which occupiers of land were and were not supposed to describe themselves as farmers? In particular how were those who mixed farming with another occupation supposed to have described themselves? The instructions for those with multiple occupations were admirably clear and succinct: ‘A person following MORE THAN ONE DISTINCT TRADE may insert his occupations in the order of their importance’.27 In other words only those whose primary occupation was farming should have recorded their occupation simply as ‘farmer’. Those for whom it was a secondary occupation should have listed their primary occupation first.
Wiki snippets:
Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify in the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes unthinkable only a century ago. ... From the development of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt until the 18th century, an equilibrium existed between the vast majority of the population who engaged in subsistence agriculture in a rural context, and small centres of populations in the towns where economic activity consisted primarily of trade at markets and manufactures on a small scale. Due to the primitive and relatively stagnant state of agriculture throughout this period the ratio of rural to urban population remained at a fixed equilibrium. With the onset of the agricultural and industrial revolution in the late 18th century this relationship was finally broken and an unprecedented growth in urban population took place over the course of the 19th century, both through continued migration from the countryside and due to the tremendous demographic expansion that occurred at that time. As labourers were freed up from working the land due to higher agricultural productivity they converged on the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham which were experiencing a boom in commerce, trade and industry.
A cottage industry is one where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. While products and services created by cottage industry are often unique and distinctive, given the fact that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies. ... [W]orking from their homes, typically part time, home workers [were] engaged in tasks such as sewing, lace-making, wall hangings, or household manufacturing. Some industries which are usually operated from large, centralized factories were cottage industries before the Industrial Revolution. Business operators would travel around, buying raw materials, delivering them to people who would work on them, and then collecting the finished goods to sell, or typically to ship to another market. One of the factors which allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place in Western Europe was the presence of these business people who had the ability to expand the scale of their operations. Cottage industries were very common in the time when a large proportion of the population was engaged in agriculture, because the farmers (and their families) often had both the time and the desire to earn additional income during the part of the year (winter) when there was little work to do farming or selling produce by the farm's roadside.
For most of history, shoemaking has been a handicraft, limited to time consuming manufacture by hand. ... By the 1600s, leather shoes came in two main types. 'Turn shoes' consisted of one thin flexible sole, which was sewed to the upper while outside in and turned over when completed. This type was used for making slippers and similar shoes. The second type united the upper with an insole, which was subsequently attached to an out-sole with a raised heel. This was the main variety, and was used for most footwear, including standard shoes and riding boots. ... Shoemaking became more commercialized in the mid-18th century, as it expanded as a cottage industry. Large warehouses began to stock footwear in warehouses, made by many small manufacturers from the area. ... Until the 19th century, shoemaking was a traditional handicraft, but by the century's end, the process had been almost completely mechanized, with production occurring in large factories. Despite the obvious economic gains of mass-production, the factory system produced shoes without the individual differentiation that the traditional shoemaker was able to provide.