Existing comment:
City Beautiful
Are cities places of vice or virtue? The City Beautiful Movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s challenge Americans to reimagine urban areas as places of beauty where people could dedicate their lives to improving themselves and the lives of others.
In 1902, the Senate Park Commission proposed a plan for Washington's monumental core featuring man-made works of architecture surrounded by artistically designed gardens and parks. Today, the National Park Service preserves that area as part of the National Mall and Memorial Parks.
Lady Bird Johnson was a prominent advocate for national beautification. In 1965, she accepted 3,800 additional cherry blossom trees from Tokyo to augment the original gift of 3,020 trees.
Though the word beautification makes the concept sound merely cosmetic, it involves much more: clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal and preservation of valued old landmarks as well as great parks and wilderness areas. To me... beautification means our total concern for the physical and human quality we pass to our children and the future.
-- Lady Bird Johnson, 1967 |