The City Beautiful and the Globalization of Urban Planning

This Element narrates the global diffusion of an urban planning model, important for today's appreciation of urban environmental beauty.

Ian Morley (Author)

9781009443234, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2025

98 pages
23 x 15.1 x 0.5 cm, 0.159 kg

During the past one hundred or so years, urbanists have composed grand narratives regarding the development of urban design and the international dissemination of planning models. Yet, building upon this historiography, whilst the transnational dimension of modern city planning has centred itself upon the diffusion of the British garden city, far less attention has been put upon the global reach of the American City Beautiful. Owing to the ethnocentricity of American planning history literature, thus, the chronicle of the City Beautiful has anchored itself, literally and figuratively, to the North American continent. Yet, in truth, grand American-inspired plans were implemented throughout the world; indeed, they were carried out long after the City Beautiful's popularity had waned in North America, and they were executed under a variety of cultural and political conditions.

1. Introduction: American city beautiful planning and its place within the study of global urban history
2. The British city beautiful
3. The American city beautiful in Southeast Asia: the Philippines
4. City beautiful planning and nation-building: Australia
5. China and the advent of large-scale modern city planning
6. Understanding planning ideas and practices from a global historical perspective
Acknowledgements
References.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]