Louis Daguerre announced the daguerreotype in 1839, and within decades photography was documenting cities, buildings and slum conditions with new authority. The Lumiere brothers projected the first paying film show in Paris in 1895, launching cinema as a mass medium. Photographs by reformers such as Jacob Riis in New York made urban poverty visible to the public and to legislators. Aerial and survey photography later became basic tools of mapping and planning.
Photography gave reformers and planners objective evidence of urban conditions, while film reshaped how cities were imagined, recorded and marketed.