The City Beautiful Movement is a North American urban planning movement with its beginning usually dated 1893, its heyday between1900-1919, and its consequences lasting until 1929. The World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago is typically marked as the beginning of the City Beautiful Movement. The Park Movement, represented by Frederick Law Olmsted, is often seen as a predecessor. Daniel Burnham, who was responsible for the architectural planning of Chicago as the ‘ideal’ and ‘alabaster’ “White City” and later developed the Plan of Chicago with Edward Bennett, is also considered highly influential.
The City Beautiful Movement emerged primarily from the middle and upper classes using the concept of beautification to tackle urban problems, which were defined in terms of disease, crime, and pollution, as a reaction to the population increase in North American cities in the19th century (while in 1860, one in six U.S. inhabitants was living in the city, in 1900 it already was one in three). The idea of beautification was influenced by the neo-classical style of the École des Beaux Arts that emphasized monumental architecture, large avenues, and parks.
For Lewis Mumford, this imperial style is, “along with the associated City Beautiful movement, (...) an expression of ‘conspicuous’ waste creating ‘new slums in the districts behind the grand avenues,’ which he likens to congested human ‘sewers,’ the equivalent of ‘icing on a birthday cake,’ which detract from the ‘realism’ needed for ‘the colossal task’ of ‘the renovation of the city.’” (Lefaivre/Tzonis, 1991)
In addition to the combination of health and aesthetic concerns in planning the City Beautiful, another purpose was to bring eye-catching elements to urban space, in accordance with Daniel Burnham’s belief that architecture should “stir the blood of men.” The so-called beautification of a city can also be understood as an educational institution, since it was not intended to bring about a better life for the poorer classes, but rather to teach moral and civic values such as patriotism and to increase the productivity of the urban economy. (The American Civic Association used the City Beautiful Movement for Social Planning in the form of slum reform.) The First National Conference on City Planning and the Problems of Congestion in Washington in 1909 was highly influenced by the City Beautiful Movement (some of the participants had traveled to Europe beforehand to study architecture).
Hence it was no coincidence that during the heyday of the City Beautiful planning movement the “Ugly Laws” were introduced into most American western and mid-western cities. Also known as the “unsightly beggar ordinances,” these statutes prohibited “unsightly” people, beggars, and people with disabilities from visiting public spaces. “Deformed” people were seen as problems that would have to be managed as much as architecture or street layout. (Schweik 2009:67) Chicago, which became a model of modern city planning and an important example of the era of the City Beautiful, also became an important site for The Ugly Laws, labor unrest, and reformist Progressive scrutiny. Though it is clear that this idea of the ideal city was one without “unsightly,” disabled beggars and other deviants on the street, histories of urban development and the City Beautiful Movement have not yet addressed the relationship to the history of the Ugly Laws. (Schweik 2009:70)
The term City Beautiful still is applied to Chandigarh today; the city established itself as a popular holiday spot and home for the well-to-do. The connection between the City Beautiful Movement and the term City Beautiful in the case of Chandigarh is not clear. Le Corbusier planned Chandigarh closely based on New Delhi, which was built by Edwin Lutyens in the beginning of the 20th century as an imperial city inspired by the style of beaux arts. As Chandigarh calls itself a modernist city, the relation to an imperialist power structure within the city is still obvious. Albert Mayer, who is much more connected to the ideas of Critical Regionalism than the City Beautiful Movement, sees a lack in not connecting it with functionalism: “We want to create a beautiful city.... Since the City Beautiful concept was thrown out fifty years ago, and the functionalists and the sociologists took over, the concept of a large and compelling and beautiful unity has not been enriched by these important later additional and integral concepts, but has rather been replaced.... We have creatively fused them but we are unabashedly seeking beauty....” (Kalia 1999:54) (EE + MH)

Sources:
Kalia, Ravi (2000): Chandigarh: the making of an Indian. Dehli: Oxford University Press.
Lefaivre, Liane/ Tzonis, Alexander (1991): LEWIS MUMFORD'S REGIONALISM. In: Design Book Review, Issue 19, winter 1991.
Wilson, William H. (1989): The City Beautiful movement. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.
Schweik, Susan (2009), The Ugly Laws, Disability in Public, New York/London: New York University Press.