Coketown, as described in Charles Dickens" Hard Times, is constructed as a typical industrial town, representing one of the many rapidly established during the age; these new communities developed solely around the newly founded factories. Although a fictional location of the industrial age, it serves Dickens" intent of presenting industrialism at its worst. Many of the details of Coketown are based on truths about on these booming urban towns, but Dickens slightly exaggerates them to focus the readers" attention on the points of the age he would like to criticize. .
Working under the assumption that only higher production rates would increase the wealth of the country, Coketown exists solely for its industrial output and provides no comfort for its working class citizens. The system believes that this efficiency is the one importance in life, so everything inside the walls of the city relates directly to maximizing this output -- it is extremely practical; no precious resources are wasted on the aesthetics of the city; "you saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful" (31). It was an infectious disease ("As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the neighborhood's too - after the manner of those pious persons who do penance for their own sins by putting other people into sack cloth"), trapping anyone who came in contact with its all-consuming standardization (260). Dickens" contempt for Industrialism is conveyed through the opening description of the town. The colors of the town are black and red - red brick covered in black ash from the factories, which even infected the river to bleed these colors combined:.
It was a town of red brick, or brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as the matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never got uncoiled.