AMERICA COMPARED:

IMMIGRANTS & CITIES

Summer Clark

The Great Transatlantic Migrations Between 1870 and 1914, the United States, which

had always been a nation of immigrants, took in the largest number of newcomers in its history. The flow of migrants to the United States was one facet of a vast  movement of European peoples across the ocean. The opening of national borders brought an unprecedented mingling of the world's peoples in Americas. Transatlantic migration was simply the extension of an old practice of traveling within Europe in search of economic opportunity. In the four decades after 1880, the United States developed the most vocal and powerful anti-immigrant movement in the New World.

City in the Land of the Dollar

Modern Urban life imposes a sameness upon the human environment that has reduced the differences between nations. In contrast the great European capitals, American cities are prosaic grids of long, straight streets with a commercial downtown of tall office buildings set apart from the residential neighborhoods that surround it. An Army of planners, architects, and civic patrons erected the magnificent White City of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The Chicago Fair inspired the "City Beautiful" movement, a push by planners and other professionals to make over Chicago and other American Cities.