unstable foundations-the birth of urbanism

But the economic crisis was not on the minds of the people Cerda called urbanists. Public-health issues moved them to think the city afresh, diseases which afflicted rich and poor alike.
Plague had always been a danger in cities- the Black Death wiped out a third of Europe in the late Middle Ages. As early modern cities became bigger and denser- and so more shit-and-urine filled- they became fertile gardens to feed rats and rat-borne disease. If an infant managed to survive its birth(a real achievement in that era of primitive obstetrics), it could look forward to death by dysentery brought on by filthy water. Population growth also meant more houses, more houses meant more chimneys polluting the air, the foetid air nurting tuberculosis.