Daniel Burnham, a man of no small plans, made the plan of the whole Chicago in 1909 (P. Hall 2002, 190). His starting point was the L´Enfant plan dating from 1791, including a great park, later mainly destroyed by roads and commercial land use. As seeking inspiration for the work, a three-man committee led by Burnham went to Europe to study the great European cities. One of the main principles of the plan was to provide parks to all the inhabitants of Chicago within walking distance, wanting Chicago to be the "Paris of the Prairie", idolising the Hausmann plan of Paris. Burnham recommended studying great European cities as examples of civic design and park planning (Scott 1971, 51).
In many cases, park advocates argued that parks could –and should – replace morally dubious activities, such as pubs and amusement parks (Cranz 1982, 29). In Cleveland Burnham had a bold attempt in transforming the city from a rugged industrial town when appointed as the head of commission in 1902. For Cleveland he recommended a civic centre, where the public buildings would be placed in a system of interlinked public parks on a lakeshore. Realisation of the plan meant that - as in Chicago - whole slums had to be swept aside; here the critics of the City Beautiful movements claiming that the whole movement was in fact a segregator from an upper-middle class perspective would have had their field day. (P. Hall 2002, 192.)In his plan for San Francisco in 1906, Burnham proposed amongst other things a continuous park strip starting from the western part of city, leading to the Golden Gate Park. This plan, which contained grand boulevards, was realised only in some fragments. (ibid., 192.)
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