Comment by dan-robertson

I mean, people go hungry today in plenty of places that fail to build (the U.K. for example) and they went hungry or lived in fear of the powerful in plenty of places before they were able to build at impressive scales.

I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?).

I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.