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Over the last 150 years, the development of American cities has been shaped less by deliberate planning and more by the relentless pursuit of profit. Urban reformers and planners often envisioned more equitable, livable spaces, but their efforts were frequently overridden by powerful corporations and policymakers motivated by economic gain. As cities expanded rapidly in the late nineteenth century, particularly with the influx of immigrant labor, developers prioritized profit over the welfare of workers, creating overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions. Rather than implementing inclusive, public health-driven infrastructure, city governments enabled the exploitation of the poor, embedding inequality into urban policies. By the early twentieth century, zoning laws, originally intended to mitigate overcrowding and improve living conditions, were co-opted by business interests to preserve property values and isolate communities. This trend continues today, where suburbanization and privatized urban development reflect the growing dominance of capital in shaping the built environment. Rather than serving the public good, urban planning increasingly became a tool for maintaining class divisions and maximizing corporate profits.

The late nineteenth century saw a rapid increase in population in cities, prompting people to change their way of life around it. In 1800, only around 4% of the population lived in cities, but at the turn of the century, that number had reached 33%. This new population boom consisted primarily of immigrants seeking industrial jobs. With an influx of people, space became a rarity, and immigrants had no choice but to live in tenement housing, often with other families. These houses were dense and overcrowded, with no direct sunlight or plumbing (Gillette 6). Despite major cities having nearly 25,000 miles of underground sewage systems by 1909, this service was only given to those who could afford it. Even though water was paid for with tax dollars, property owners had to request sewage systems, placing the well-being of tenants at the mercy of landlords more concerned with profit than public health. (Steinberg 164). Many property owners choose to avoid the added expense, opting instead to let their tenants endure unsanitary and dangerous conditions. The influx of immigrants and subsequent housing shortages set up the conditions for exploitation and minimal investment in adequate living conditions. Tenements were not designed for livability; they were crammed in for profit. The sewage infrastructure of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reflects a pattern where planning was not absent, but rather hijacked by capital interests. City governments did not fail to build infrastructure—they built thousands of miles of underground sewage systems. Rather than creating inclusive systems that met the needs of a growing urban population, the city enabled the exploitation of the working poor by embedding inequality directly into its policies. This closed-loop system reflected a strange irony: the waste of the poorest city dwellers sustained the food systems that would ultimately feed the very society that refused them proper sanitation. It was an economy of necessity, not design, and one driven by survival rather than civic planning.

The city’s failure to enforce equitable sanitation systems turned poor neighborhoods into dumping grounds, where waste management took on self-sustaining forms. In overcrowded tenement districts, human waste was often thrown directly from windows into the streets below. The streets were not filled only with human waste, but animal waste as well. Immigrant families often kept freely roaming pigs as economic security, who would scavenge for trash and produce their own waste in turn, resulting in an urban common of sorts (Steinberg 157). This filth, known as night soil, did not go to waste. By 1880, nearly half of all major cities in the United States used night soil to on their land or sold it to dealers who made it into fertilizer. This fertilizer was then shipped to farmers who, in turn, would use it on their crops that would be sent back to the city for consumption (Steinberg 163).

Ironically, this problem due to a lack of plumbing would stop due to water. Poor working families that could not afford to buy a home with a connected sewage system could also not afford fresh water. Urbanites relied on wells that, as populations rose, became contaminated with disease from increasing manure, and progressivists focused on beautifying the city. A significant contributor to the issue of manure was the roaming pigs. In the late nineteenth century, reforms were passed prohibiting the owning of wandering pigs, and soon the animals were driven out of the city. With the pigs gone, poor families had no economic security and were forced to rely on the cash economy. Surrounding farmers also lost their source of manure and began turning to artificial means to fertilize their crops. To replace the hogs, the city hired municipal garbage collectors, despite resistance from poor families who had previously relied on selling the trash as hog feed. Initially, garbage collection was left to the discretion of individual wards. However, when residents pushed back against the new system, health officials intervened and implemented citywide garbage collection. (Steinberg 166). Even attempts at informal planning by the poor were undermined by policies serving other economic classes.

The Progressive Era laid the groundwork for modern urban growth, offering an early vision of how cities might be improved through deliberate planning. Cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had grown too fast and were overrun with problems: overcrowded housing, rampant disease, unsafe working conditions, and a widening gap between rich and poor. Progressives believed these issues were not just natural outcomes of industrialization, they were problems that could be fixed through deliberate, thoughtful planning. It was the belief that the environment citizens lived in had a strong influence on their behavior, morals, and well-being. A good, structured surrounding would inspire moral and civic improvement among a city’s residents. In addition to advocating for clean water, waste removal, and better public health systems, progressive reformers aimed to improve living conditions in tenement housing. In 1901, new legislation in New York required housing to have minimum standards for light and provide running water (Gillette 9). The success of the regulatory efforts in New York would lead to other major US cities introducing their own laws. While these reforms were rooted in social ideals, they also laid the foundation for zoning laws. What began as a Progressive tool for social reform was increasingly shaped by the profit motive, revealing the limits of planning when it battles against economic power.

Planners initially intended zoning to combat the problem of overcrowding within tenements, aiming to introduce separate low-density housing and industrial districts in hopes of improving the quality of life while also rationalizing land use. While Progressive-era planners envisioned neighborhoods as tools for social reform and civic well-being, their ideas were quickly co-opted by zoning policies aligned with profit-driven interests. What started as an idea for social reform became, in many places, a tool to maintain class divides and protect capital. Rather than fostering diverse, integrated communities, zoning became a mechanism to preserve property values and appeal to middle- and upper-middle-class homeowners. As the 1930s approached, business owners realized they could profit from investing in the development of deteriorated areas and began private investments in suburban neighborhoods. (Gillette 69) This marked a shift in values from its civic concern in the progressive era to the protection of business and revenue growth. Fully planned neighborhoods were only for those who could afford them, and low-income areas were cleared. The government encouraged companies to invest in projects by providing them with long-term, low-interest loans at low interest rates. This shift marked the growing dominance of capital in shaping the built environment, one that only accelerated in the postwar era as new forms of retail and transportation infrastructure emerged to serve the needs of capital.

As this market-driven approach to zoning took hold, the rise of car-centered retail in the postwar era deepened the divide between civic planning and economic interest. Rather than developing integrated, walkable communities, retailers and developers pursued locations that maximized accessibility by automobile, not proximity to residents. Development was redefined to “car-orientated” development, notably due to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which funded 90% of a 41,000-mile superhighway designed by engineers with no input from city planners (Wells 254). Branch stores and shopping centers followed, often located at intersections of major roads or along new highways, where visibility and access for drivers promised higher profits (Wells 262–265). Municipal zoning reinforced this shift by requiring off-street parking in fixed ratios to retail floor space, encouraging a design standard that assumed all customers would arrive by car. The physical design of these spaces, dominated by expansive parking lots and anchored by chain stores, reflected the growing consensus that profitability hinged on automotive convenience. The automobile itself became one of capitalism’s most powerful tools for reshaping urban space, serving not only as a mode of transportation but as a mechanism for expanding markets and driving consumer behavior. These retail landscapes, shaped almost entirely by the logic of capital, reveal just how thoroughly profit came to dictate the form and function of American cities.

Over the past 150 years, cities have grown not through thoughtful, inclusive planning, but through decisions driven primarily by profit. While planners and reformers occasionally pushed for healthier, more equitable urban environments, their efforts were frequently constrained, redirected, or undone by the interests of capital. From overcrowded tenements to manipulated zoning laws, and selective infrastructure investment to the rise of profit-oriented suburbanization, economic self-interest has consistently dictated the physical and social structure of urban life. Rather than serving the public good, planning often became a tool to reinforce inequality and maximize return on investment. If future urban development is to serve the many instead of the few, it must reassert planning not as a servant of capital, but as a means of creating more just, sustainable, and inclusive spaces for all.

Works Cited

Gillette, Howard. Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the Garden City to the New Urbanism. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Steinberg, Ted. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, Oxford University Press, 2018.

Wells, Christopher W. Car Country: An Environmental History. University of Washington Press, 2013, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwsp/detail.action?docID=3444520.