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 of the Cornell University Library.

Exhibition organized by Jennifer Minner, Assistant Professor and Liz Muller, Assistant Director and Curator of Media and Digital Collections, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.