To start, a side of Bacon...
Ed Bacon
It wouldn't make sense if the inaugural featured "celebrity planner" was anyone other than the planner for whom this blog is named, Mr. Edmund Bacon (1910-2005). To be honest, I had no idea who Bacon was until his obituary ran in the New York Times. I was working in my college mail room, reading the paper--waiting for the mail to come in--when I came across the most extraordinary obituary: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E2DB153FF93BA25753C1A9639C8B63
With a personal love for obstinate idiosyncrasy, Mr. Bacon has had my heart since 2005.
The 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition was the achievement of the recently founded Philadelphia City Planning Department (created in 1942 by the suggestion of our friend Mr. Bacon), to showcase and engage Philadelphians in the city's modern progress.
This early vision quintessentially reflects mid-20th century planning with five major foci: 1. Redevelopment plans for older areas; 2. Expressways, without traffic lights; 3. Small parks within 1/2 a mile of every home, with playfields and parks within 3/4 to a mile; 4. Improvements to airport, bus & truck terminals and railroads; 5. Port, industry and warehouse improvements. To give such import to these features certainly seems anachronistic sixty years later, but what deserves attention is the process itself. Prior to 1942, Philadelphia, birthplace of American democracy, renowned for its elegant planning by William Penn in 1683, did not itself have a consultative instrument for its residents. Philadelphia was not the exception--planning commissions was a trendy new idea in the early half of the century (Detroit, 1909-1918; New Haven, 1913; New York, 1936-8)--nevertheless, what we might take for granted now as a democratic institution at the most grassroots level exists in cities only by people like Mr. Bacon championing the idea for his city. That seems pretty laudable to me.
