Plan of Chicago
What it is
The Plan of Chicago (1909), prepared by Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett and sponsored by the Commercial Club, was a comprehensive City Beautiful plan for the metropolitan region. It proposed a system of diagonal boulevards and parks, a monumental civic centre, improved rail and harbour facilities, and above all a continuous public lakefront reclaimed for parks and recreation. Lavishly illustrated by Jules Guérin, it treated the city as a single coordinated design problem. Much of the lakefront and park proposals were subsequently realised.
Why it matters
It became the exemplary model of the grand comprehensive city plan and influenced civic planning across the United States and abroad. The exhortation associated with Burnham, to make no little plans, became a guiding slogan of the planning profession, while the protected Chicago lakefront remains its enduring legacy.
Plans it shaped
- San Francisco Burnham Plan (unbuilt) (1905)
- Chicago Plan of 1909 (1909)
- New Delhi (Lutyens’ Plan) (1911–1931)
- Canberra (1913)
- Thessaloniki Hebrard Plan (1917)
- Greater Helsinki Plan (unbuilt) (1918)
- Regional Plan of New York & Its Environs (1929)
- Los Angeles Olmsted–Bartholomew Parks Plan (1930)
- São Paulo Plano de Avenidas (1930s)
- Recife Agache Plan (1943)
- Chicago Central Area Plan 2003 (2003)
- Chicago GO TO 2040 / ON TO 2050 (2010/2018)