Contemporary American planners and architects should really draw more inspiration from the City Beautiful movement. Aesthetics are a significant part of the urban experience, and the ideals of City Beautiful emphasize aesthetics as a means to inspire residents.

The movement has its roots in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (pictured above). The grounds of the exposition showcased a utopian vision, with large, grand buildings in classical European architecture with an American twist as well as large green areas for recreation and natural beauty. In essence, the idea behind the movement was that these grand, good-looking public spaces would inspire pride and civic engagement in residents.

Examples of real-world applications of the City Beautiful movement’s ideals can be found in Chicago and Washington, D.C. within both the 1909 Chicago Plan, and the revival of the original L’Enfant Plan for Washington, D.C. as the McMillan Plan. These plans featured new large public spaces and civic buildings (see: the National Mall in the McMillan Plan and San Francisco’s Civic Center).

For the most part, the plans weren’t brought to completion (for a variety of reasons), but their bones make for immensely enjoyable public spaces that are well-used and loved to this day. I can’t even imagine D.C. without the National Mall and its iconic landmarks; or Chicago without its miles of lakefront parkland.

Why are City Beautiful’s attributes so important to have in an urban context? Well, the movement originated from the dissatisfaction that citizens and officials had with the livability of cities. At the time, cities were mainly geared toward industrial uses, and thus were perceived as dirty and unsafe. No thought was given to order and livability.

The 1909 Chicago Plan introduced a new plan for “systematic arrangement of streets and avenues…in order to facilitate movement,” “acquisition of an outer park system, and of parkway circuits,” and “the development of centers of intellectual life and of civic administration, so related as to give coherence and unity to the city.

The main factors addressed by the plan were mobility, nature/recreation, and civic pride/duty, which unfortunately today are often forgotten in the context of city maintenance. Due to a number of factors (the decline of domestic manufacturing, corruption, shrinking tax base, etc.), many cities face similar issues of livability that the ideas of the City Beautiful movement might be able to alleviate.

Mobility is extremely important for the well-being of an urban area – it plays a role in public happiness, the local economy, and more.

This was an area in which the City Beautiful movement is praised. The 1909 Plan of Chicago’s plan for a “system of diagonal and circumfrence roads design to ease crowding and congestion” was a good start for mobility. Under an updated City Beautiful ideal, planners now should incorporate this idea into other modes of transportation like micromobility (bikes, scooters), buses, and rail. Simple, direct, and attractive public transit corridors add convenience and pleasantness to travel within urban areas.

Public beauty can do wonders for the psyche of a population. One of the main points of the City Beautiful movement was that “design could not be separated from social issues.”

This is no different in the modern area – even without any knowledge of urban planning, the average person can tell the difference between a healthy city and a damaged one. People feel more secure when a place is not only well-maintained, but built to be aesthetically-pleasing at a human-scale.

This is one point where the original City Beautiful movement missed the mark – the grand architecture that was envisioned was rightfully criticized as “overpowering” and costly. However, the basic idea – that attractive architecture and abundant natural retreats instill a type of pride in citizens that can’t be found elsewhere – is simple but brilliant.

Not enough American cities embrace the ideas of the City Beautiful movement these days. The idea that social issues and urban beauty are connected certainly has validity, and officials should ponder this connection when attempting to address those issues. While many cities are unfairly caricaturized as dangerous and dirty, there is some truth to these accusations. Introducing a new planning paradigm based on City Beautiful would go a long way towards alleviating the issues that plague places like San Francisco and New York City today.