THE RISE OF AMERICAN CITIES.

This article focuses on the problems that were encountered in city planning and development in the U.S. There are now at least 350 cities, with a total population of nearly sixteen millions, in the country. Since 1790, the population of the U.S. has increased sixteen times; while the cities have increased in number sixty times, and the urban population nearly a hundred and sixty times. The aim of the article is threefold: to analyze the causes that have determined the sites and distribution of U.S. cities; to analyze what has been the growth of their population; and to explore the most noticeable thing about the status and social condition of people in cities. Before noticing the rate of growth of particular cities, it is desirable to consider what causes have planted and nourished our chief centers of population. The reasons which can be given for the site of most ancient and mediaeval cities are here singularly inapplicable. A colonized and colonizing country, no cities have been built up by distinct, elaborate schemes of colonization.