City Beautiful Movement And New Urbanism
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Background: In the late 19th century and early 20th century with industrialization and tremendous growth of cities, the cities had became places which were considered unsafe, unhealthy and overcrowded. The movie, ‘Gangs of New York’ was an excellent depiction of condition of cities filled with gang wars, crime and unrest. The upper income and middle income groups had moved out to the suburbs, and wanted to do something to make the cities a better place to live in.
The City Beautiful Movement: The ‘City Beautiful Movement’ is said to have evolved as a response to improve the social environment of the cities. It was believed that ‘when they trumpeted the meliorative power of beauty, they were stating their belief in its capacity to shape human thought and behaviour’. (Wilson 80). It is also said that City Beautiful Movement was inspired by the European cities which had strong, ornate and beautiful city centres which gave the city an identity and created a sense of pride and belonging. In the City Beautiful Movement landscape was also seen as a critical element which formed the foundation of Urban Development. Landscape network or the Park System as Professor mentioned in his lectures connected the various neighbourhoods and uplifted the economic value of the neighbourhood. The park system along with the Civic Centres were meant to transform poor neighbourhoods to spaces that were inviting for living, working and recreation. During the City Beautiful Movement the public were ready to accept and adopt the classical style of Architecture for the Civic Centres, as the Classical style evoked dignity and order which the cities seemed to be devoid off in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
This movement in my opinion could be seen as a social reformist movement to bring a city back to life or back to how the city was envisioned. It could also be considered as a precursor to New Urbanism and result in the ‘end of the suburbia’ to some extent. The Movement can be considered as an important turning point in the history of town planning as 2|Page
it addressed physical, sociological, environmental and economical aspect of a City through the idea of landscape and design of public spaces. It believed (what even today we are struggling to make the government believe in India) that Architects and not just Planners can have a tremendous impact on the economic and socio value of a city through design. It is heartening to see the value the public put to ‘Beautification’, as this was beyond purely an ‘aesthetic’ value. The movement was not intended to be a facelift, but was intended to kill the evils in the mind of the people via beautification. It was about bringing in peace and harmony to the cities.
New Urbanism Movement: As architects we are constantly having dialogues with people on value of design on social, ecological and cultural aspects of the city, whether at an urban scale or at a building scale. It is about how livable is the city or the community in all of the above aspects. The dialogues are focused on about how design can influence the life of the inhabitants or the users, and how the users might influence the growth of the space with time as the fourth dimension.
After the Second World War and with advent of cars, suburban sprawl had become a common phenomenon. Only in the mid 20th century, the concept of ‘New Urbanism’ or what began as a sense of pseudo urbanism to break the boredom of the suburban dwellers and to foster sense of belonging by increasing social interactions started getting widespread acceptance.
The monotony and the insipid nature of the suburbs was a downer for the Architects as it oversimplified and undervalued the value of design for an independent house. There were no nodes or centres or plazas that were designed uniquely from another node or center. Each street or neighbourhood in the suburban community looked the same. It seemed like an endless sprawl of repetitive boxes that considered one size fits all. The house was not a representation of the person who owned it, rather the house made you become one in a 3|Page
thousand. The identity less houses were also devoid of character. It did not invoke a feeling of having a sense of place and belonging to the land on which it stood.
These drawbacks both in terms of lack of character and lack of life in the suburb as it was predominantly only residential, made people relook at how a suburb can be revived so as to bring in the merits of the Urban aspects of the city. Moving back to the city was not considered an alternative for many as ‘the city beautiful movement’ was not successful in eradicating the evils of the city. However depending on the city for all activities other than residential was also not appealing. A sense of pseudo Urbanism or a mini Urban centre was what the suburbans were aspiring. In my opinion ‘Broadacres’ by Frank Lloyd Wright could be considered as a vision that has certain parallels with New Urbanism. In Broad Acres, there were farms, little factories, entertainment and works areas and everything one needed within the community. ‘Broadacres’ can be considered as precursor to ‘Satellite Towns. It was about decentralization and having many self dependent centres rather than one centralised city with many suburbs. In New Urbanism, the work, factories and the farms were excluded in their approach. As Professor mentioned in the class, introducing a pig farm or a factory would greatly diminish the value of one’s property and thus the new Urbanism focused on small Retail, Commercial, Recreation and Residential as the extent of the diversity. In many of the metropolitan cities in India we missed or jumped from over populated cities to multiple and decentralized centres in the ever growing cities. The suburban culture was skipped due to the limited and clogged transportation network. The only way a new community would be successful in a country like India was if it had a mix of retail, commercial and residential, as long commutes was not an option.
The suburbs in India imitated the mediocrity of the suburban housing, which was repetitive and devoid of identity, but beyond the communities it was as Urban as one could aspire for with respect to the mix of uses in the fringes of the city. Importantly, ‘the most refreshing
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aspect of this movement is that it promotes a positive image of town life that includes the public as well as the private realm.’ (Fulton, William)
Drawing the parallels between ‘City Beautiful Movement’ and ‘New Urbanism’: The strongest parallel in my opinion would be the value attached to the public spaces or Civic Centres as a means to bring about a radical change in the lifestyle of the people inhabiting the space and inducing a sense of belonging to the neighbourhood. In the era of City Beautiful movement the change was with respect to the cleansing the minds of the people and bring about harmony and peace.
Both were questionable in their reach and ability to transform people. As Professor said in the lecture, City Beautiful Movement’ gave a false impression of the city to the outsiders or the transient occupant. Ten percent of the city may have been transformed by the movement, whereas ninety percent still remained in discord and poverty. New Urbanism was similar in the sense that only small areas in the large suburbs were ‘urbanised’. The suburbs were still dependent on the automobile for transportation, and it was still planned with keeping in mind the automobile.
Both the movements were true to their cause and intentions. There was no mimicry except in borrowing of Neo classical historical styles of Europe. While City Beautiful movement was introduced at a time of great unrest, and New Urbanism was right after the Second World War, both had a powerful impact on the city and greatly benefited the society. Both the movements were important marks in the progression of Urban Planning. Both the movements believed in integration of the different areas of the city or community and believed in creating walkable neighbourhoods.
Most importantly both believed that public spaces can greatly influence the social connections of the community. 5|Page
Differences between ‘City Beautiful Movement’ and ‘New Urbanism’ New Urbanism began as a movement for change in suburbs. Suburbs were dull, repetitive and lacked diversity and devoid of gentrification. It is still a challenge to introduce gentrification in suburbs, as the grounds for choosing a particular suburb was your economic background and your position in the society. New Urbanism would not solve the issue of bringing about a diversity in the social mix in the residential zone, however the mini urban centres could become centres for gentrification, which is an absolute requirement if we want a truly Urbanised community. In my opinion it is difficult to separate Urbanism from ‘cultural and social mix’. New Urbanism has evolved to encompass the complexity of the urban matrix and is applicable to the metropolitan regions, while City Beautiful Movement has stayed as a movement of the past.
Conclusion The introduction of well designed Public Places with a Park system could greatly make any city a more livable and more importantly resilient. Similar to how the Americans looked towards Europe for inspiration, the Public spaces, the boulevards, the parks and Public Spaces in European cities even today, could be a great casestudy for India and China to mitigate the struggles that any developing country has to experience. Expanding the notion of New Urbanism from its earlier forms such as Seaside, Florida , today it can be applied to each decentralised node in the city and to the city as a whole. The planning of the growth of cities and planning of a new city can be envisioned with the principles of New Urbanism as is clearly listed in the Center for New Urbanism webpage, so as to have diversification and less dependency on the automobiles.
We can take New Urbanism a step further to see how character building to the existing spaces with an aesthetic that is global and yet has a traditional flavour can be envisioned so as to evoke a sense of community pride and belonging. Many of the commercial and 6|Page
residential tall buildings of today, can be placed in any city across the globe. Globalisation has flattened the design aesthetics and simplified or nullified the significance of cultural aesthetics. For example, China was mimicking the West with respect to achieving a skyline, only to proclaim as the Professor said, ‘it has arrived’. The environmental effects however to ‘arrive’ within a very short span of time has been detrimental. On one hand it can apply the City Beautiful movement on a more philosophical level, which looks beyond only pure beautification, but looks at the Park System to solve Air Quality, Sewage and other environmental degradation. On the other hand it needs to apply the various guidelines of New Urbanism. But more importantly new urbanism as mentioned earlier needs to evolve so as to ensure a new language for representation of buildings that is unique to its region is binding. Buildings and communities have been developed many a times with no local character or design evolved out of their own history.
To conclude New Urbanism is a movement that is here to stay, as it has a few underlying philosophies, but the guidelines around the philosophy can be interpreted and re-interpreted with time.
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References 1. Wilson William H, ‘ The City Beautiful Movement’, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989 2. Julie K Rose, ‘The City Beautiful: The 1901 Plan for Washington DC’, Spring 1996, A project for American Studies at University of Virgina. Website: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/citybeautiful/city.html 3. Fulton, William, ‘The New Urbanism Challenges Conventional Planning’, September 1996, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Website: http://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/new-urbanism-challengesconventional-planning 4. ‘New Urbanism. Creating livable sustainable communties’ Website: http://www.newurbanism.org/ 5. Fulton, William, ‘The New Urbanism. Hope or Hype for American Communities’, 1996, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Website: https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/the-new-urbanism-full.pdf
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