ABSTRACT
The production of enough decent housing for a growing urban population, particularly for the poor and near poor, is vital to meeting basic human needs and to improving slum conditions. Pioneering urban planners began to sound the alarm that American cities were headed toward deep crisis and impending breakdown. The pressure of a rapidly mounting urban population has created the suburbs and exurbs that stretch for miles and miles around every American city of any size. The cities are also, in many ways, the victims of those powerful and ornate products of Detroit. Many other urban activities also pollute the air, the water, and the land. Solid wastes pollute the urban landscape; untreated human waste and industrial chemicals pollute our streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans; various home-used sprays and other chemicals pollute the air and the land as well.
