"We must give as much weight to the arousal of the emotions and to the expression of moral and aesthetic values as we now give to science, to invention, to practical organization. One without the other is impotent."
– Lewis Mumford
Mission: CitiesBeautiful.org is devoted to (1) providing people everywhere a broadened and deeper understanding of civic beauty via the 15 Beautiful Facets, (2) determining what is beautiful to them via a personalized Civic Beauty Rankings Test, (3) presenting interactive tour maps that – according to their test results – show the most beautiful urban places in the world, and (4) offering numerous additional educational opportunities for an ever greater appreciation of beautiful cities.
Services offered by CitiesBeautiful.org include university lectureships, consulting advice to travel companies, and research projects on the responses to the Civic Beauty Rankings Test.
CitiesBeautiful.org is the brainchild of Gilbert Castle. For many years Mr. Castle was President of San Francisco Beautiful, a non-profit organization that has been promoting civic beauty since its founding in 1947 to save the cable cars. Mr. Castle holds a Master's degree in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Harvard University. Most of his career has been devoted to Geographic Information Systems (GIS, a.k.a. computerized mapping) applied to urban planning, real estate development, and natural resource management. Mr. Castle's two seminal GIS books have been continuously in print for 20 years.
To contact us please use the email form that will appear further down on this page when you click here.
