Everything about the city and city life in America changed rapidly during the nineteenth century, from city size and layout to city government, labour, the mix of social classes and ethnic backgrounds in urban populations, population density, street lighting, water supply, sewage control, modes of transportation, public safety, and policing.  And the changing city took America with it:  as one historian puts it, “Few nations have urbanized more rapidly or more extensively” than the U.S. did in the nineteenth century (Bender).  The percentage of the total American population living in urban areas went up from 5.1% in 1790 to 45.6% in 1890.

This essay attempts to describe the general trends of infrastructural and social changes during this period of rapid urbanization, and points out some of the features of nineteenth-century city life in America that most clearly distinguish it from urban living in the twenty-first century.  While the major American cities of this time – principally New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco – competed with each other in keeping up with the general trend toward modernization, each of     them has a unique history and faced its own challenges.

One last note:  this essay focuses especially on changes to the public life of American city dwellers, and thus mostly ignores the significant changes to their private lives that accompanied urbanization.  Family life, gender roles, domestic technology, and the architecture of dwelling-spaces all changed during this century, and these important influences on daily life should not be forgotten. (SB)

Works Cited

Bender, Thomas.  “The Reader’s Companion to American

History — City Government.”  Houghton Mifflin

College Division.

<http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_08660_urbanization.htm>.