City Beautiful Movement starts earlier

[Krases]

One of the things hat really harmed the city beautiful movement is that it only had about 30-40 years to exist before the great depression stopped it. The City Beautiful movement had its routes in the Le' Enfant plan for Washington DC and the Chicago Worlds Fair of the late 1800's.

Could the movement have started earlier? How?

What I think is needed are two things: a major artistic inspiration like the worlds fair and a large financial backing for the grand plans of these cities. The gridiron that many cities are organized on would have to be abandoned in place of Le' Enfant style street patterns.

 

[Roger II]

First I'd say that the City Beautiful-both as a project and a style-was rooted in Hausmann's rebuilding of Paris(much more so than in L'Enfants plan of DC, which was basically along late Baroque lines-for instance, it was largely on a blank slate, didn't really adress architectural design, and only specified a relative handful of monumental buildings). And as such, it was a project rooted in the needs and contradictions of the industrial metropolis, so what really needs to happen I think is an earlier sense of a "city beyond control" to happen to someplace that's already a major center or else for a Hausmannesqe project to happen sometime earlier in England maybe.

 

[Whanztastic]

First I'd say that the City Beautiful-both as a project and a style-was rooted in Hausmann's rebuilding of Paris(much more so than in L'Enfants plan of DC, which was basically along late Baroque lines-for instance, it was largely on a blank slate, didn't really adress architectural design, and only specified a relative handful of monumental buildings). And as such, it was a project rooted in the needs and contradictions of the industrial metropolis, so what really needs to happen I think is an earlier sense of a "city beyond control" to happen to someplace that's already a major center or else for a Hausmannesqe project to happen sometime earlier in England maybe.

I'd suggest Manchester or Edinburgh. Birmingham maybe?

 

[Roger II]

I'd suggest Manchester or Edinburgh. Birmingham maybe?

Manchester seems like the likeliest candidate, if only because Edinburgh's rather wonky geography and geology(the town being effectively on two rocky spurs makes any sort of heavy planning outside the New Town rather dicier.

 

[Krases]

So this Manchester building spree is brought on by what?

Perhaps a giant fire followed by a royally backed urban planning explosion? I think that if this urban planning explosion is to be later brought over to America, a prominent American has to be involved in the cities planning.