America's new look as an urban nation. The United States is one of the world's biggest urban nations. Urban growth in the United States has clearly followed these three stages of gradual growth, explosive take off, and maturity. First, the era of colonial or per-modern cities stretched …show more content…
The nature of city life for urban Americans was not safe. While the cities were growing quickly millions of people moved to these urban areas in America. Many immigrants moved to the bigger metropolitan areas like Chicago and New York looking for better opportunities. Due to the rapid the rapid growth of these urban areas, they faced many challenges. Some of the challenges being faced were crimes, dangerous working and living conditions, and disease. Crime mostly happened in the poorer areas. They had to worry about gangs committing violent acts, prostitution and alcoholism was a big deal at this time as stated:
Nineteenth-century cities witnessed the rise of organized crime, particularly in immigrant neighborhoods where residents struggled to deal with poverty and the challenges of their new environment. Successive waves of immigrants, first the Irish and the Germans, and later the Chinese, Italians, Poles, Jews, and other Southern and Eastern Europeans, formed support networks for newcomers that sometimes evolved into criminal gangs. While early gangs did not typically engage in crime, some did commit violence to protect their "turf," or ethnic neighborhoods. Prostitution was also widespread, as were alcohol abuse and domestic violence. Police forces were typically understaffed and underpaid, and lacked the resources to effectively combat crime. (Von Alt, n.d., Para.