Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his novel Crime and Punishment, shows how the development of the urban environment, specifically St. Petersburg where the action of the book takes place, creates an evil milieu in which such crimes as Raskolnikov's result. It is clear that this portrait of the oppressive and corrupting nature of the city is meant to be an indictment of the socioeconomic environment and its impact on human thought and behavior. However, Dostoyevsky hardly places all the blame for the corruption of Raskolnikov and others on the shoulders of the evil city. To the contrary, the book ends on a Christian note, with Raskolnikov turning to the New Testament as solace. In addition, it is clear that for Dostoyevsky it is the moral and spiritual elements which determine human crime or sin, rather than the social and economic elements. Finally, it is up to the individual to make the decision to open himself to the redemptive possibilities provided by God through one's own awakened conscience.
From the first images of the book, the reader is deluged with the oppression suffered by Raskolnikov in St. Petersburg. He lives in a "closetlike room," "more a cupboard than a room," but it is the psychological oppression more than the physical which eats at the protagonist: "He had plunged so far within himself, into so complete an isolation, that he feared meeting not only his landlady but anyone at all" (13). We see in this set of details the effect of the city on the human beings---especially the poor human beings---trapped in its environment. Raskolnikov has been driven deep into himself in a state of acute alienation from other people and even from himself.
One of the results of urbanization is the pressing together of many human beings into a confined area in which business, industry, sexuality, crime, and various forms of madness seethe together in a mass of bewildering energies. The poor are particularly vulnerable to this storm of pres...