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(More customer reviews)This is a thoughtful critical collection of essays centered around examining how a leading Philadelphia planner in 1959 envisioned Philadelphia would be like in 2009. With the luxury of time, we may not look at the directions Philadelphia were thinking of going and see where they went and how things were, as of 2009.
In 1959, Philadelphia City Planning Commission Director Edmund Bacon predicted Philadelphia would host the 1976 World's Fair as a shining example of urban revitalization. What happened was the city declined economically.
Bacon foresaw underground streets, moving sidewalks, thriving factories, regional parks in the suburbs, and no more billboards. He admits he was guessing as no one in 1959 could foretell the future. Still, his vision gave a direction that with much compromising and submission to realities led to what Philadelphia has become.
Bacon was skilled as a planner and architect. He was not a political strategist and never obtained the political power that Robert Moses obtained in directing New York's public projects. Bacon did have a long career of involvement in Philadelphia's development over several decades, unlike most other city planners. Bacon influenced many Mayors and decision makers.
Bacon foresaw the city's universities becoming focal points for renewed housing around them. He hoped that city blight would cease to exist. He foresaw purchase of development rights programs to direct excess development while preserving county lands as the program directed.
Gregory L, Heller notes that Bacon began working on Flint, Michigan transportation and parking issues in 1938. Bacon also advocated for creating professional city planning staffs. While working on a $3.5 million Federal housing project, the city Housing Commission saw its funding slashed due to efforts of private developers who feared that accepting the funds and building the housing project would reduce their profits. Bacon fought to put acceptance of the Federal funds on the ballot. By a 2 to 1 margin, the voters rejected accepting the Federal funds. From this, Bacon learned "city planning is a combination of social input as well as design".
Walter Phillips, Sr., a Philadelphia civic leader, convinced Bacon to move to Philadelphia, which had no city planning. Philadelphia has a City Planning Commission which was widely ignored. Phillips and Bacon worked to create an updated Planning Commission. They appealed to the public and City Council creared the Philadelphia City Planning Commission (PCPC).
The PCPA wrote a new city charter. It used Federal funds to redevelop the East Poplar, Southwest Temple, and Mill Creek neighborhoods. Louis Kahn helped develop scale redevelopment plans with sidewalks and historic building preservation.
The Redevelopment Authority in 1949 proposed relocating to Eastwick people whose homes were torn down for slum removal. Bacon opposed creating a totally poor section of town, yet the project moved forward. Bacon worked to create a good physical design. Efforts at racial segregation in Eastwick were slight. The RCA focused on integrating transitional areas and opposed scattered site housing.
Bacon helped remove a railroad wall that was blocking the expansion of development. Penn Center was developed in its place with a combination of offices, commercial sites, and open air walkways.
Bacon sought row homes and downtown transportation options along with preserving streams for the Far Northeast. The residents wanted single family homes. Bacon's zoning plans were adopted. Today, though, the Far Northeast is reliant on cars and not mass transit as Bacon desired. It resembles the suburbs more than the urban row houses Bacon hoped to see throughout the city.
In 1949, Society Hill was a mostly working class neighborhood with many tenement housing. Bacon sought to expand walkways into Society Hill, engage in historic preservation efforts, and mix housing with museums to induce middle class residents to move into Society Hill. Mayor Richardson Dilworth was supportive of Bacon's ideas to revitalized Society Hill. The Old Philadelphia Development Corporation was established as a neighborhood developer. It was then rate for a city to combine slum removal with historic preservation. There was no comparable Federal funding mechanism. In 1959, the U.S. Urban Renewal Administration was among the architects of this project. The project did destroy several 19th century structures and displaced people. It did successfully attract many middle class people to live there.
Bacon felt comprehensive planning was "busy work" and often ignored it.
Bacon felt racial discrimination should be addressed in planning. He sought to hire African American planners. Bacon helped create the nation's first scattered site housing program. The program would cease in 1970 due to lack of funds, legalities, and administrative abuse.
Mayor James Tate made Bacon the city's Development Coordinator as well as Planning Director. Bacon wanted to move the city away from automobile use yet he also loyally never spoke out publically against a Mayor. He supported plans for crosstown expressways until Mayor Tate came out against them.
Bacon resigned as Planning Director in 1970 during controversy over alleged graft in downtown development. Bacon was not accused of anything illegal.
Bacon would later oppose allowing skyscrapers being built in Philadelphia, arguing that City Hall should always be the city's tallest building. He lost this fight.
Bacon did not have the power as did his contemporaries Robert Moses or Ed Logue. He did have access to power and he knew how to use his specialized planning skills to influence those who had power, such as Mayors and the media.
Guinan McKee notes that Professor Paul Davidoff argued in 1965 that Bacon's plans did not adequately meet public needs. Davidoff was also crucial that Bacon's plans were political decisions with little public input. McKee also believes history has given Bacon a larger role in Philadelphia's planning than he actually had. Bacon worked in concert with many others. William Rafferty avoided the public spotlight yet also was a key planning advisor who often fought with Bacon. Rafsky was an advocate of Americans for Democratic Action reforms that were generally embraced by Mayor Joseph Clark. Bacon had less influence with Mayor Clark, who listened more to Rafsky.
Bacon was more concerned with planning design than he was with socioeconomic improvements, according to McKee. Bacon seemed neglectful of planning in some poorer neighborhoods, such as North Philadelphia.
Rafksy noted in the 1950s that Philadelphia required $1 billion to remove its blighted areas. It only had $45 million to do so. Rafsky feared small scale efforts could even be harmful as they could cause areas around removed blight to deteriorate if new development was too slow to move in.
A large portion of urban removal's policies were focused on Center City development. Bacon initially opposed this.
It is noted that most planning projects during Bacon' s period involved the private sector. Thus, businesses had sizable influences over projects. Private sector input was often stronger than any input from the poor.
Walter Phillips advanced public private partnerships that would create more industry. Philadelphia was losing its industrial base. Bacon preferred either fully publicly owned land for industrial projects, or to have the land sold to the private sector in competitive bidding. Bacon saw stabilizing housing problems as the key to Philadelphia's economic future. Phillips wanted more direct economic action.
McKee believes Bacon was wrong to allow an elevated highway to be constructed. McKee believe Bacon, who was expert on design issues, failed to see that design decision could destroy communities as well as improve them.
Scott Gabriel Knowles argues that Bacon focused too much on create a national exhibition in Philadelphia in 1976. Bacon was inspired by Philadelphia's national exhibition in 1876. Philadelphia, though, faced greater challenges with its economic decline. A fair involves much investment and it often a part of a host city's economic revitalization plans. Bacon envisioned complex projects that new happened. Thus, the bicentennial fair never happened.
Bacon advanced ideas for the fair yet did little to plan for their existence. Bacon proposed created cable cars across the Schuylkill River and created electric trains along Chestnut Street. Councilman John B. Kelly was placed in charge of the fair. Criticisms of the 1964 World's Fair in New York made many believe the idea of national fairs had passed. Meanwhile, Mayor Tate's attention was divided with his desire to bring the 1972 Olympics to Philadelphia. Tate's opponent for Mayor in 1967, Arlen Specter, questioned spending on the fair. While Tate was reelected, Specter's criticisms remained fresh in the public's mind. The costs of the proposed fair, with some estimating a billion dollars of cost, created further public backlash. Several leading advocates for more resources being placed into improving poorer, mostly African American neighborhoods, objected to the fair's costs. The newly elected Mayor Frank Rizzo was critical and while be favored Eastwick as a fair site, the Eastwick idea fell though as unworkable. Rizzo then abandoned further fair planning, to the outrage of Bacon.
Harris M. Steinberg notes the difficulties Bacon or anyone has in predicting the future. Bacon may or may not have realized his predictions were made just before Philadelphia...Read more›
Click Here to see more reviews about: Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City
When Philadelphia's iconoclastic city planner Edmund N. Bacon looked into his crystal ball in 1959, he saw a remarkable vision: "Philadelphia as an unmatched expression of the vitality of American technology and culture." In that year Bacon penned an essay for Greater Philadelphia Magazine, originally entitled "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," in which he imagined a city remade, modernized in time to host the 1976 Philadelphia World's Fair and Bicentennial celebration, an event that would be a catalyst for a golden age of urban renewal.What Bacon did not predict was the long, bitter period of economic decline, population dispersal, and racial confrontation that Philadelphia was about to enter. As such, his essay comes to us as a time capsule, a message from one of the city's most influential and controversial shapers that prompts discussions of what was, what might have been, and what could yet be in the city's future.Imagining Philadelphia brings together Bacon's original essay, reprinted here for the first time in fifty years, and a set of original essays on the past, present, and future of urban planning in Philadelphia. In addition to examining Bacon and his motivations for writing the piece, the essays assess the wider context of Philadelphia's planning, architecture, and real estate communities at the time, how city officials were reacting to economic decline, what national precedents shaped Bacon's faith in grand forms of urban renewal, and whether or not it is desirable or even possible to adopt similarly ambitious visions for contemporary urban planning and economic development. The volume closes with a vision of what Philadelphia might look like fifty years from now.
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