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The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic change in the dynamic of urbanization, as the share of the world’s urban population doubled from 6.6 per cent in 1800 to 12 per cent in 1900. Cities around the world were being built and rebuilt during this period with the aim of creating productive urban spaces by bringing about transformations in urban infrastructure like water supply, sanitation engineering, architecture, zoning and street planning, transportation engineering, and so forth. This seminar will survey the transnational history of the development and transformation of cities around the world, including in the United States of America, and their environments during the nineteenth century. The histories of these cities are intimately linked with both the natural environment surrounding them and the communities living and building on them, and we will explore a different city every week with the help of different kind of media, like literary fiction, film, maps, newspaper articles, etc.