![]() If one imagined one’s city was going to rival London or Paris, one had to spend the money to build a big water system to achieve it, depending on growth and expanded revenue to pay the resulting costs. ![]() It cities to think hard about what they expected to become, because along with grandiose ambitions came significant up front costs. ![]() It was possible for newly forming cities in the United States in the early to mid-1800s to piecemeal roads and the like, but ultimately water systems required a new sort of collective action unlike anything urban communities had attempted to date. It’s hard to overstate the significance of the cultural jump from the individualism of gathering one’s own water for one’s own home to the collectivism to banding together to build a water system. Fairmount waterworks, Philadelphia, courtesy US Library of Congress ![]()
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