American urban planning movement directed towards achieving a cultural parity with the cities of Europe, led by architects, landscape architects and reformers. The movement began in the 1850s with the founding of improvement societies in New England towns, but it gathered momentum and secured a national identity in the 1890s under the stimulus of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893), the development of metropolitan park systems and the founding of municipal art societies in major cities. National interest in the movement intensified with the publication of the comprehensive McMillan Plan for Washington, DC (1901–2; see WASHINGTON, DC, fig. 2), designed by the Exposition participants Daniel H. Burnham, Charles F. McKim, Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Frederick Law Olmsted jr.

• City Beautiful Movement
  • Hamlin: (1) A. D. F. Hamlin
  • Urban planning, §IV, 3: c 1800–c 1890: Improvements
  • Urban planning, §V, 1: c 1890–1945: Extension policies and the emerging professions
  • Canada
    • Lyle, John M.
  • United States of America
    • Beaux-Arts style
    • Los Angeles, §1: History and urban development
    • McKim, Mead & White, §1: History of the firm
    • USA, §II, 3: Architecture: The Civil War and late 19th-century eclecticism