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Transportation Beautiful

Did the City Beautiful Movement Improve Urban Transportation?

University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Several innovative transportation concepts were critical components of the early twentieth-century City Beautiful reconfiguration of built environments: orderly public places, suitable for important civic buildings; clear hierarchies of streets, avenues, and boulevards, organized in rational patterns with orchestrated vistas; and new terminals that housed improved intercity rail facilities and enhanced intracity travel through improved multimodal surface transportation connections. The City Beautiful aesthetic approach to conceiving urban circulation networks was an important and often overlooked contribution to transportation planning, and improving urban transportation was an important goal for City Beautiful reformers. A review of historical planning documents and project descriptions suggests that civic leaders’ approaches to improving urban circulation during the City Beautiful era are enduring contributions of the movement’s integrated approach to land use and transportation planning and its desire to transform cities into more beautiful places.

Key Words: City Beautiful movement • civic centers • Chicago Fair • urban transportation planning • parks • parkways

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