The attempt to realize an urban paradise is becoming a conscious purpose
as this extract made from a report made to a city-plan committee of a
Pittsburgh commission will indicate:
"A third undeveloped asset in the Pittsburgh waterfront is its value for
recreation and as an element of civic comeliness and self-respect. One of
the deplorable consequences of the short-sighted and wasteful
commercialism of the later nineteenth century lay in its disregard of what
might have been the asthetic byproducts of economic improvement; in the
false impression spread abroad that economical and useful things were
normally ugly; and in the vicious idea which followed, that beauty and the
higher pleasures of civilized life were to be sought only in things
otherwise useless. Thus the pursuit of beauty was confounded with
extravagance.
"Among the most significant illustrations of the fallacy of such ideas are
the comeliness and the incidental recreation value which attach to many of
the commercial water fronts of European river ports, and it is along such
lines that Pittsburgh still has opportunity for redeeming the sordid
aspect of its business centre.
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