11-07-2014, 07:48 AM
City Beautiful
To understand Chicago of the early 1900s, many cities contained one million residents, but few planned properly for such a population explosion. As a result, cities developed in an ad hoc fashion. This made them shapeless, inefficient and, in many cases, dangerous.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, a Chicago architect, began to address these issues in an approach to urban planning that would become known as the City Beautiful movement. City Beautiful was characterized by the belief that if you improved form, function would follow. In other words, an attractive city would perform better than an unattractive one.
Beauty came from what Burnham called "municipal art" -- magnificent parks, highly designed buildings, wide boulevards, and public gathering places adorned with fountains and monuments. Such beautiful additions to the cityscape could not directly address perceived social ills, but they could, at least in Burnham's thinking, indirectly improve social problems by enhancing the urban environment
To understand Chicago of the early 1900s, many cities contained one million residents, but few planned properly for such a population explosion. As a result, cities developed in an ad hoc fashion. This made them shapeless, inefficient and, in many cases, dangerous.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, a Chicago architect, began to address these issues in an approach to urban planning that would become known as the City Beautiful movement. City Beautiful was characterized by the belief that if you improved form, function would follow. In other words, an attractive city would perform better than an unattractive one.
Beauty came from what Burnham called "municipal art" -- magnificent parks, highly designed buildings, wide boulevards, and public gathering places adorned with fountains and monuments. Such beautiful additions to the cityscape could not directly address perceived social ills, but they could, at least in Burnham's thinking, indirectly improve social problems by enhancing the urban environment