The City Beautiful and the Globalization of Urban Planning

This Element discusses how urbanists have long portrayed urban design and planning models globally, but the American City Beautiful has been less explored due to its ethnocentric focus on North America. Despite its popularity waning in North America, American-inspired plans were implemented worldwide, despite cultural and political conditions.

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During the past one hundred or so years, urbanists have composed grand narratives regarding the development of urban design and the international dissemination of planning models. Yet, building upon this historiography, whilst the transnational dimension of modern city planning has centred itself upon the diffusion of the British garden city, far less attention has been put upon the global reach of the American City Beautiful. Owing to the ethnocentricity of American planning history literature, thus, the chronicle of the City Beautiful has anchored itself, literally and figuratively, to the North American continent. Yet, in truth, grand American-inspired plans were implemented throughout the world: indeed, they were carried out long after the City Beautiful's popularity had waned in North America, and they were executed under a variety of cultural and political conditions.