An American Urban Residential Landscape, 1890–1920: Chicago in th ...

its journey from rural towns and villages, its central thrust emphasized an optimistic vision of the future of urban America. Grassroots improvers followed their faith in this vision, believing their local efforts would contribute to ameliorating the social problems created by the rapid urban, industrial, and commercial changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and help build an ethical society based on social mutuality and civic participation. However, in post–World War I Chicago, improvement and its grassroots practitioners had become synonymous with racial segregation and an illiberalism underscored by a laissez-faire tradition of rights-oriented, self-interested individualism. Under these circumstances, the central meaning of improvement drew upon an older, anti-urban tradition that posited cities as irredeemable, unsanitary places beset by crime, immorality, and uncontrollable pollution. After 1920, grassroots improvement became something embraced and practiced beyond the city in the burgeoning suburbs of Chicago and other American cities.