What caused the change?
Labs / History
Push and Pull
Every dot is a few thousand people deciding where to live. Push factors like famine, low pay, and war drive people out of the countryside; pull factors like city jobs and higher wages draw them in. Nudge the sliders and watch the migration streams answer.
Labs / History / Push and Pull
Push and Pull
Every dot is a few thousand people deciding where to live. Push factors like famine, low pay, and war drive people out of the countryside; pull factors like city jobs and higher wages draw them in. Nudge the sliders and watch the migration streams answer.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
History is about change over time and the choices that shape it. This model helps you compare causes, consequences, and patterns without treating the past as a list of dates.
Explore
Try the model
Year 0Net → city +0k/yrUrban 22%City jobless 0%Farm jobless 0%
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Raise the city wage sharply. How fast does the countryside empty, and why does the flow eventually slow down on its own?
- Trigger a great famine with high city wages held low. Are people pushed out even when nowhere pulls them?
- Push city jobs down while the city is crowded. What happens to urban joblessness, and does that reverse the migration?
- Set war high but keep farm wages good. Which matters more for whether people flee — opportunity or safety?
- Can you find a setting where net migration sits near zero — an equilibrium where city and countryside feel equally worth living in?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Build an explanation with a cause, a change, and a consequence. Then identify evidence from the model and one limitation of what the model can show.
Check
Before you leave
Who or what was affected?
What can this model not tell us?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.