Prescriptions for Urban Ailments:
Planning Solutions of the 1920s-1940s
Exhibit co-sponsored by the Department of City and Regional Planning and
the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
April 20-June 30, 2014, West Sibley Hall, First Floor
From the roaring twenties to the New Deal era, planners, civic leaders, and other reformers diagnosed urban ailments and prescribed new interventions to treat them. The young profession of city planning pointed to the debilitating effects of congestion and sprawl, as large metropolitan areas grew up and out. The negative aspects of automobiles were already becoming noticeable in urban areas. Planning as a profession evolved alongside a growing demand for improvements to urban mobility, safety, and parking.
This exhibition explores these planning approaches through items drawn from the architecture and city planning collections in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.