Civic Consciousness And American Urban Reform At The Turn Of The 20～(th) Century

American urban reform at the turn of the 20th century was one of the great influential reforms in American history. This thesis chooses the Cleveland as a case, analyzing Cleveland urban reform in civic consciousness perspective, mostly studying the relation of civic consciousness and this urban reform. On the one hand, this thesis discusses the evolution of American civic consciousness and its effect on the urban reform at the turn of the 20th century. On the other hand, this thesis also illuminates general situation of this urban reform and its relative effect on American civic consciousness, and briefly recounts the significance of this urban reform to the development of American cities in future.As many of American cities at the turn of the 20th century, Cleveland was also confronted with a series of civic problems at that time; the government of Cleveland had made great efforts to solve all of these problems, especially Tom Johnson'urban reform was more prominent thereof. First and foremost these reforms were the results of American civic consciousness, and that American civic consciousness rooted in the idea of democracy, the conception of pursuing happiness, individualism and the principle of self-rule, etc. Such civic consciousness had undergone some transformation and evolved gradually in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Then civic consciousness became an important factor to promote the urban reform at the turn of the 20th century to rise, and determined the pattern of urban reform in a way. Correspondingly, this urban reform further aroused the civic consciousness and planted"new spirits"; it developed civic democracy, created well mutual relations among state, community and individual, moreover.The case of Cleveland indicates that there will be a series of institutional, technical and social problems in the development of cities, available approaches to solve these problems is to launching urban reforms, but before the urban reforms the idea of townsmen would be renovated, it is as an important precondition. Accordingly, the urban reform can aspire the arousing of the civic consciousness, and cultivate new public consciousness and civic spirits, thus not only deepen the urban reform, but have an important meaning to impel the cities to develop and to be triumphant in future.Differing from anterior study which emphasized particularly on policy-oriented or decision-making of local government, this thesis takes a"bottom to top"point of view to discuss the urban reform at the turn of the 20th century; this is somehow a new point of view. Theoretically, the intention of this thesis is to broaden the study realm of this subject, explores a new thoughtway to understand the urban reform at the turn of the 20th century. Practically, the intention is to obtain some experiences and lessons from this urban reform, provides some references to the developing countries which have entered the speedily developmental phase of urbanization, going with a series of civic problems to use when they launch urban reforms.