Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did Jacob Riis influence housing reform in the United States?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Aerial view of Paris showing broad, radiating boulevards lined with historic buildings, demonstrating Baron Haussmann's city planning design. — urban planning Georges-Eugène Haussmann's modernization plan transformed many areas of Paris through the addition of wider boulevards, better lighting and water sanitation, new parks, and improved rail transportation.

Jacob Riis was a pivotal figure in American urban planning and social reform, primarily through his efforts to expose the dire living conditions in New York City slums.1

As a police reporter, Riis witnessed the devastating impact of overcrowded, unsanitary tenement housing, where he famously documented infant mortality rates as high as one in ten. His 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, utilized his pioneering flash lamp photography to provide visceral, factual evidence of these conditions.12

By dramatizing these realities in his writing and lectures, Riis successfully shocked the public conscience, directly stimulating the first significant legislation in New York aimed at curbing tenement house evils. His work garnered high-level political support, most notably from Theodore Roosevelt, who famously pledged his assistance after reading the book. Furthermore, Riis’s investigative approach served as a foundational influence on the muckraking journalism movement that emerged in the United States after 1900.21