City Beautiful Movement

Refers to the movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries governed by the desire of American architects and landscape architects to boost the national standards and prestige of American urban planning and city development through municipal reform and beautification rather than through social reform. With the driving force of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), the movement secured the active development of metropolitan park systems and the establishment of reform-motivated art societies in major cities.