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Why does Daniel Burnham appeal even to critics who don’t care for his monumental vision of an all-classical city? Northwestern University historian Carl Smith explains in his new book, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City. Burnham’s big plan expressed our desire “to reach beyond piecemeal solutions and act efficaciously on the grandest scale,” he writes. “At the very moment [1909] when life became modern and Americans realized that twentieth-century urban experience was fraught with limitations and contingencies, Burnham insisted that if we are just bold and brave and determined enough, it is possible to master time and space and make all things right. The Plan‘s very real historical appeal lies precisely in the fact that it proclaims history is no match for human will and cities can determine rather than merely accept their fate.“
(2) When a solid majority of the Chicago City Council recently passed and repassed an ordinance requiring some of those businesses to pay their help better, the mayor vetoed it on the grounds that those stores would simply choose to locate just outside the city limits. In other words, nowadays cities must “accept their fate.”
