Talk:City Beautiful movement

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The current tone of this article is quite unsympathetic with the movement. Example: "The movement waned after World War I when it came under assault from planners and critics who disliked its expensive, impractical, and allegedly elitist and superficial characteristics." --Lockley (talk) 08:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The eye-catching display of banners and the cropping off of the sides of the building make this picture a poor candidate for illustrating its architecture. Unfree (talk) 07:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As it stands, the opening paragraph reads, "The City Beautiful Movement was a Progressive reform movement in North American architecture and urban planning that flourished in the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of using beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. The movement, which was originally most closely associated with Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., did not seek beauty for its own sake, but rather as a social control device for creating moral and civic virtue among urban populations.[1] Advocates of the movement believed that such beautification could thus promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life and help to remove social ills." (The word "progressive" is spelled with a capital P, and is a link.)

In my opinion, the article cited doesn't support that interpretation at all. It doesn't say beauty was not sought for its own sake, nor that it was sought as a "social control device" for "creating virtue among populations". (Except that beauty itself is a virtue!) The source says that it was intended to counter the dominance of commercial buildings downtown over public ones.

The idea of flourishing with an intent leaves me puzzled.

The idea of "using" (without "for") leaves me puzzled.

I wonder whether the reference to "Progressive", the proper noun, is appropriate, as opposed to "progressive". All reform movements are progressive; "Progressive" was the name of a political party, wasn't it?

Were the 1900s a century or a decade?

What do "such" and "thus" refer to?

Which "quality" of life would be "increased", and can "social order" be inharmonious?

So far, I agree with the earlier commentator who wrote that the article is biased. Unfree (talk) 08:08, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In Nashville, Tennessee prior to its merger into the consolidated city-county Metro Government (in 1963) the term "City Beautiful Commission" was the official nomenclature for the agency responsible for things such as brush debris pickup and the installation and maintenence of landscaping in public areas. Was this term quite widespread for a long time after the height of the movement and widely used? I expect this to be the case, but have no strong references to prove such. 75.246.211.242 (talk) 04:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi folks, I'd like to bring this topic to more languages. Starting with German. Whoever wants to join, feel free! Thank you. Horst-schlaemma (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]