The
City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of
North American architecture and
urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing
beautification and
monumental grandeur in cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with
Chicago,
Cleveland,
Detroit, and
Washington, D.C., promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and
civic virtue among urban populations. Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a
harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life, while critics would complain that the movement was overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of social reform;
Jane Jacobs referred to the movement as an "architectural design cult."