ancient cities

152 City Beautiful Movement
international success of Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)
and Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005), both of which
prominently treat ethnic and racial conflict, suggests
that audiences still respond to films that
explore topical urban themes.
Despite the overwhelming dominance of
Hollywood films in the global market, smaller
national cinemas continue to flourish and to produce
films that treat local urban cultures.
As nations such as China, Russia, and Turkey
develop further economically and create larger
domestic audiences, their cinemas will likely realize
more films treating the city and metropolitan
life and receive greater notice by foreign viewers.
Although some mode of theatrical exhibition will
likely survive in large cities, it may well become the
exception rather than the rule for film viewing that
it was for most of the twentieth century. Yet continued
technological developments and the often
homogenizing tendencies of globalization seem
unlikely to eradicate the prominence of the city in
cinema and cinema in the city as hallmarks of a
still incomplete modernity.
Edward Dimendberg
See also Benjamin, Walter; Cinema (Movie House);
Cinematic Urbanism; Kracauer, Siegfried; Metropolis;
Urban Semiotics
Further Readings
Dimendberg, Edward. 2004. Film Noir and the Spaces of
Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Friedberg, Anne. 1995. Window Shopping: Cinema and
the Postmodern. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Gomery, Douglas. 2002. Shared Pleasures: A History of
Movie Presentation in the United States. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Hansen, Miriam. 1991. Babel & Babylon: Spectatorship
in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Jancovich, Mark and Lucy Faire, with Sarah Stubbings.
2003. The Place of the Audience: Cultural
Geographies of Film Consumption. London: British
Film Institute.
Jousse, Thierry and Thierry Paquot. 2005. La ville au
cinéma. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma.
Schwartz, Vanessa and Leo Charney. 1995. Cinema and
the Invention of Modern Life. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Shiel, Mark and Tony Fitzmaurice, eds. 2003. Screening
the City. London: Verso.
Vogt, Guntram. 2001. Die Stadt im Kino. Deutsche
Spielfilme 1900–2000. Marburg, Germany: Schueren.
Ci t y bE a u t i f u l Mo V E M E n t
The City Beautiful movement rose in late nineteenth-century
America as a reformist attempt by
the ruling elites to solve the urban crisis that was
plaguing big cities across the country during the
Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth century
and particularly during the economic depression
of 1893 to 1897. With its emphasis on
comprehensive, large-scale planning, the City
Beautiful movement would set the standards for
modern city planning.
The vanishing of the agrarian society, coupled
with the increasing processes of immigration and
urbanization, had led to a drastic rise of the population
in urban areas across the country. From
1860 to 1910 the American population as a whole
had increased from 31.4 million to 91.9 million,
and 46 percent of Americans lived in urban areas,
as manufacturing jobs in the city industry replaced
agriculture jobs in the countryside. In the same
time period, the number of American cities with
over 100,000 residents rose from 8 to 50, while in
1910 several cities had a population exceeding the
1 million mark.
The striking concentration of poverty in core
urban areas created dangerous sanitary conditions,
phenomena of congestion and overcrowding in
tenements, while at the same time the improvement
of transportation systems spurred the unrelenting
outmigration of the upper classes to the suburbs
and the countryside. The massive migration of
families to the city in search of opportunity in the
rising industry led to a climate of social unrest,
labor struggles, and ethnic conflicts.
Overcrowding, blight, and crime became major
concerns for the elite classes, who lived in fear for
their own safety. In 1890 Jacob Riis reported
about the living conditions in the tenements of
New York City:
[T]hree-fourths of its [New York’s] people live in
the tenements, and the nineteenth-century drift