As migration to cities persisted, Europe became more urbanized than ever in the later part of the nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1911, urban inhabitants increased from 25 to 44 percent of the French population and from 30 to 60 percent of the German population. Other Western European nations saw similar rises.

Rural migrants to cities were generally disenfranchised from their customary social ties. They frequently faced substandard accommodation, social isolation, and, since they lacked the necessary skills, unemployment.

People from various ethnic origins found themselves in close proximity to one another and found it difficult to socialize. Competition for jobs spawned new forms of political and social dissatisfaction, such as anti-Semitism leveled at tens of thousands of Russian Jews.

Indeed, much of the political anti-Semitism of the late twentieth century stemmed from the challenges caused by urban migration.

Inward urban migration imposed additional social and economic pressures on already overstressed city resources, eventually altering urban life patterns. During the second half of the twentieth century, national and local administrations remodeled the core areas of several important European towns.

Previously, the center urban regions housed and employed individuals from various socioeconomic backgrounds. From the mid-twentieth century onward, designers converted these districts into regions with enterprises, government buildings, major stores, and theaters, but less inhabitants.

Central cities were now dominated by commerce, trade, government, and leisure activities.

The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889, first as a temporary tower for that year's international trade show. However, not all of Paris' new constructions reflected the effect of middle-class trade and the rule of iron and steel. The Roman Catholic Church directed the construction of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Sacré Coeur) high atop Montmartre between 1873 and 1914 as an act of national penance for the sins that allegedly led to French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871).

The Eiffel Tower, seen in this painting while it was being built, was to become a symbol of newly rebuilt Paris, and its steel framework a symbol of French industrial prowess. In almost every country, this resulted in the growth of suburbs encircling the city proper. These suburbs contained families whose breadwinners worked in the city center or at a factory inside city boundaries.

Unlike in the United States, European suburbs frequently comprised of apartment buildings or individual residences constructed close together with modest grounds.

The extension of trains with low-cost weekday tickets, as well as the advent of mechanical and, subsequently, electric tramways, as well as subways, enabled tens of thousands of employees of all classes to commute daily between the city and the outskirts.

Home and work became more physically separated than ever before for hundreds of thousands of Europeans.

Concerns about health and housing emerged as a result of the large cholera outbreaks of the 1830s and 1840s. Unlike many other frequent lethal diseases of the time, which mostly affected the poor, cholera affected all classes, and the middle class wanted a remedy.

Prior to the late-century establishment of the bacterial hypothesis of illness, doctors and sanitary reformers believed that miasmas in the air propagated infections that led to cholera and other diseases. These miasmas were detectable by their terrible scents.

Many physicians and government officials began to emphasize the deadly unclean circumstances connected with overpopulation in cities and enterprises, such as basement slaughterhouses, in the 1840s.

Louis René Villermé (1782–1863) wrote his Tableau de l'état physique et moral des ouvriers (Catalog of the Physical and Moral State of Workers) in 1840, which detailed urban working-class conditions in France.

The English people was appalled by Edwin Chadwick's (1800–1890) Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population in 1842. Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) published comparable findings in Germany.

These and other private studies, as well as those issued by state commissions, were inextricably related to the concerns of deplorable living conditions and public health. They also claimed that hygienic reform would eliminate the hazards. In addition, the reports now include some of the

After 1848, the attempts of governments and the more conservative middle classes to maintain public order resulted in a rising concern with issues of public health and substandard housing. There was a widespread belief that only through improving working-class health and housing would middle-class health be secure and the political system be stable.

The Eiffel Tower and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart signified the Third Republic's social and political divides between liberals and conservatives.

The recommended answer to the health threat was cleaning, which would be accomplished by the installation of modern water and sewer infrastructure. These facilities were built gradually, generally initially in capital cities and then in regional centers considerably later. Some big cities did not have adequate water infrastructure until about 1900.

Nonetheless, the construction of such systems was one of the most significant medical and engineering triumphs of the second half of the nineteenth century. Paris' sewage system was a well-known component of Haussmann's restoration scheme.

The Albert Embankment along the Thames in London featured not just massive sewers dumping into the river, but also gas mains and water pipelines; all were enclosed in high walls of granite and concrete, making it one of the tallest structures in the world.