How were cities built and planned in the early 1900's?

At America's first urban planning conference, held in New York in 1898, a British planner asked whether he and his colleagues were striving for beautiful people or beautiful cities. Is urban planning about physical design, he wondered, or about making things easier for the people who live in our urban spaces?

It was an essential question for the field, which really wasn't born until the early 20th century.

Before then, there were three types of people thinking about how a city should look and function - architects, public health officials, and social workers. Each group approached the question of city building very differently.