The City Beautiful Movement

Critics of the turn-of-the-century's City Beautiful Movement denounced its projects—broad, tree-lined boulevards and monumental but low-lying civic buildings—as grandiose and unnecessary. In this masterful analysis, William H. Wilson sees the movement as its founders did: as an exercise in participatory politics aimed at changing the way citizens thought about cities.

Awarded the Lewis Mumford Prize of The Society for American City and Regional Planning History and named Outstanding Book in Architecture and Urban Planning by the Association of American Publishers.

"A major contribution to the scholarship on the history of urban America and the history of American city planning... [Wilson's] discussion of the goals and political reform ideology of the City Beautiful advocates is the most thoughtful and widely researched analysis of this complex subject to haveappeared." — History.

Critics of the turn-of-the-century's City Beautiful Movement denounced its projects — broad, tree-lined boulevards and monumental but low-lying civic buildings — as grandiose and unnecessary. In this masterful analysis, William H. Wilson sees the movement as its founders did: as an exercise in participatory politics aimed at changing the way citizens thought about cities.

"An outstanding piece of scholarship." — Paul Boyer, University of Wisconsin.

Booknews

Thirteen historians bring their various specializations to the single case study of Pittsburgh, providing perspective on the city itself and on the general process of urbanization. They explore many aspects of Pittsburgh's cultural and institutional life: race, class, gender, politics, occupation, and infrastructure. Wilson (history, U. of Northern Texas) explains and defends the turn- of-the-century movement in urban design that led to wide tree-lined streets flanked by low-lying, monumental public buildings. He argues that the movement was not elitist and insensitive to the needs of city dwellers, but that it invited citizen participation and a new perspective of the landscape. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

William H. Wilson is professor of history at the University of North Texas. His books include Coming of Age: Urban American, 1915-1945 .Creating the North American Landscape.Gregory Conniff, Bonnie Loyd, Edward K. Muller, and David Schuyler, Consulting Editors.