Chicago was founded in 1803 in the Great Lakes region of Illinois. In 1833, it had only 350 inhabitants. By 1900, this had grown to 1,685,000. This exponential growth challenged prevailing Western concepts of urbanisation. As this transformation unfolded, an era emerged in which urban centres were created rationally and with precise plans. This new approach traces its origins to Chicago's example.

In 1850, the city became the hub of the American railroad network. It strategically linked the two most populous areas of the East and West Coasts. It quickly grew into one of the world's leading manufacturing centres. The Chicago Board of Trade, a major grain exchange, was founded in 1848. Twenty years later, the Stock Yards, the largest slaughterhouse of its time, were built. Around this time, with the advent of canned meat, the principle of mass nutrition was born.

Everything was rationally designed according to production principles of scalability and intensity. The goal was to achieve maximum output with minimal labour. For this, a rationally designed city was needed to support the production system. Here, the first skyscrapers were built—imposing buildings that allowed thousands to carry out daily or work activities simultaneously in the same space. This entailed significant individual anonymity and alienation, caused by building standards focused solely on increasing worker productivity.

In short, Chicago is the origin of everything we call modern in our cities, from its great productive and commercial power to the functionality of its building layout, urban grid, and transportation systems. Obviously, this also means that all the negative things we criticise about our cities originated there, such as the dullness and alienation that can be felt over a lifetime. Our urban model remains an example of great human ingenuity, practicality, and resilience, a fact exemplified by Chicago itself, which, destroyed in 1871 by a massive fire, recovered within a few years to host the 1893 World's Fair.