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The lost art of building cities

2026-06-03 · 11:42 UTC ·Works in Progress ·0 min read

Brief

The lost art of building cities is a Works in Progress podcast-style discussion (published 2026-06-03) in which Samuel, Ben, and Aria examine nineteenth-century urban growth. They show cities grew a thousandfold while raising wages and housing standards by pairing laissez-faire building with decades-ahead street planning and regulated, user-funded monopoly utilities under price controls.

Why it matters

Nineteenth-century cities often expanded up to a thousandfold while real wages rose, average home sizes increased, and widespread public goods like electricity and indoor plumbing were delivered.

Key details

  • The era combined laissez-faire building rights for landowners with decades-ahead street-network planning plus regulated, user-funded monopoly utilities (transport and utilities) that turned profits while operating under price controls.
Source evidence

In the nineteenth century, cities often grew a thousandfold while increasing wages, the size of homes, and delivering great public goods like electricity and plumbing to their people. What made them so extraordinary? They had a hybrid of laissez-faire and top-down control. Landowners could build almost anything they liked but street networks were laid out with near-Soviet thoroughness decades in advance. Transport and utilities, meanwhile, ran as regulated monopolies. They were funded by users, turned a profit, but prices were controlled.

Samuel, Ben and Aria discuss what made this system work and why it was dismantled.

Channel: Works in Progress
Published: 2026-06-03
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINr7uJDjOg