At the end of the 18th/beginning 19th Centuries, the churchyards were running out of space and were beginning to be seen as dirty, vile places that overcrowded not just the dead inhabitants but also the living. Cemeteries weren't always seen this way, however. When Josef Haussmann wanted to close the city cemeteries to better enact his far-reaching formal reformation of Paris, the city inhabitants wouldn't have it. They cried in the streets "Pas de cimitiere, pas de cite!" (translated: no cemetery, no city!). Today, Boston is an exception in a country that would prefer the "out of sight, out of mind" approach to cemeteries: Burial sites today in Boston are celebrated as 35% of the open space in the city (The Granite Garden pg 219), but in many instances cities developed above and around their burial sites.

Washington Square Park in New York City was its original "Potters Field". In 1797 it still existed outside the city limits. It is estimated that some 20,000 people are still buried under that park, which is now one of the city's most utilized open spaces.

The crowded conditions caused strong reactions throughout Europe and America, best summed up by Thomas Hardy, who wrote in "The Levelled Churchyard":

O Passenger, pray list and catch

Our sighs and piteous groans

Half stilted in this jumbled patch

Of wretched memorial stones!

We late-lamented, resting here

Are mixed to human jam,

And each to each exclaims in fear,

"I know not which I am!"