Burnham'sPlanand Moody'sManualCity Planning as Progressive Reform

Abstract

Using Walter D. Moody's Wacker's Manual of the Plan of Chicago (1911) as an early classic in the history of American planning promotional literature, this article explores the relations of Daniel Burnham's 1909 plan for Chicago, as translated by Moody into a more democratic medium, with the intellectual concerns of progressive reformers at the turn of the twentieth century. Special emphasis is given to the emerging profession of the civic promoter and his impact on urban planning. Moody's manual provides the primary documentation for this study; the book's key ideas (e.g., belief in mass education, the efficiency movement, the efficacy of public relations in implementing public planning, the influence of the urban environment upon human behavior), as well as its deficiencies and legacies, are analyzed within the context of the intellectual history of the American city planning movement and in the history of the reform movement known as progressivism.

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