Arguably the most influential document in the history of urban planning, Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, coauthored by Edward Bennett and produced in collaboration with the Commercial Club of Chicago, proposed many of the city’s most distinctive features, including its lakefront parks and roadways, the Magnificent Mile, and Navy Pier. Carl Smith’s fascinating history reveals the Plan’s central role in shaping the ways people envision the cityscape and urban life itself. Smith’s concise and accessible narrative begins with a survey of Chicago’s stunning rise from a tiny frontier settlement to the nation’s second-largest city. He then offers an illuminating exploration of the Plan’s creation and reveals how it embodies the renowned architect’s belief that cities can and must be remade for the better. The Plan defined the City Beautiful movement and was the first comprehensive attempt to reimagine a major American city. Smith points out the ways the Plan continues to influence debates, even a century after its publication, about how to create a vibrant and habitable urban environment. Richly illustrated and incisively written, his insightful book will be indispensable to our understanding of Chicago, Daniel Burnham, and the emergence of the modern city.

In this volume the authors tell the real stories of the planners, politicians, and everyday people who shaped contemporary Chicago, starting in 1958, early in the Richard J. Daley era. Over the ensuing decades, planning did much to develop the Loop, protect Chicago’s famous lakefront, and encourage industrial growth and neighborhood development in the face of national trends that savaged other cities. But planning also failed some of Chicago’s communities and did too little for others. The Second City is no longer defined by its past and its myths but by the nature of its emerging postindustrial future. This volume looks beyond Burnham’s giant shadow to see the sprawl and scramble of a city always on the make. This isn’t the way other history books tell the story. But it’s the Chicago way.

Plan of Chicago reproduces all 143 plates from the original, 48 in color. It also contains a plate of City Hall, rendered in color by Jules Guérin, that was omitted from the 1909 edition. Kristen Schaffer's new introductino examines Burham's handwritten draft of the book focusing on those parts that were edited out of the publication, to suggest a reinterpretation of the plan."--Book jacket.

With exquisite illustrations, including full-color reproductions of Jules Guerin's famous watercolours, as well as original drawings by Aric Lasher, this title is the first in a series by a nonprofit foundation on Chicago architecture and urbanism. Its practical, viable proposals for city living chart a path for Chicago's future.

This work presents a comprehensive history and evaluation of the role of the 100 percent reserve plan in the banking legislation of the New Deal reform era from its inception in 1933 to its re-emergence in the current financial reform debate in the US.

Daniel Burnham was the man who is largely responsible for the appearance of Chicago today, particularly the lake front parks. With his partner, John W. Root, he designed and built the first skyscrapers and the World's Columbian Exposition.--Publisher description.

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.