Charles Mulford Robinson (1869–1917) was a journalist and a writer who became famous as a pioneering urban planning theorist. He has the greatest influence as a missionary for urban beautification.[1] He was the first Professor for Civic Design at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which was only one of two universities offering courses in urban planning at the time, the other being Harvard.
Robinson wrote "The Fair as a Spectacle" in 1893, an illustrated description of Chicago's World Columbian Exposition, a watershed event for the City Beautiful Movement, and went on to write the first guide to city planning in 1901, titled The Improvement of Towns and Cities.