"With a skillful use of carefully researched detail, Warner relates the transformation from a handicraft to a factory system of production to the pervasive quest for private gain, and shows how that basic objective restricted the city's response to such community needs as education, health, and welfare. . . . His book is packed with suggestive historical detail."
— American Historical Review

"[This book] serves, in a way which no other city biography can claim to, as the historical analogy of urban America."
— Urban Studies

"Written with intelligent elegance and candor. . . . A fascinating book."
— Times Literary Supplement

"A splendidly economical and enlightening piece of urban history. . . . Contributes more than an important remedial lesson in the cultural foundation of the urban crisis."
— American Institute of Planners Journal

Acknowledgments
Intorduction to the Second Edition

PART ONE: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TOWN
1- The Environment of Private Opportunity
2- War and the Limits of the Tradition

PART TWO: THE BIG CITY 1830-1860
3- Spatial Patterns of Rapid Growth
4- Industrialization
5- The Specialization of Leadership
6- Municipal Institutions
7- Riots and the Restoration of Public Order

PART THREE: THE INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS
8- The Structure of the Metropolis
9- Some Metropolitan Districts
10- The Industrial Metropolis as an Inheritance

Bibliography of Recent Philadelphia Books
Notes to Tables in Text