Jon A. Peterson. The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917. Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. xv + 431 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-80187210-5.
Reviewed by Daphne Spain (Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, University
of Virginia)
Published on H-Urban (March, 2005)
Lofty Ambitions, Limited Achievements
Jon Peterson’s Birth of City Planning is a traditional
history that expands his earlier work on the City Beautiful Movement (1893 to 1910). It differs from the previous work by identifying sanitary reform and the civic
art movement as antecedents to the City Beautiful (hence
the “1840” in the title), and by tracing the contributions
of the City Beautiful Movement to the emergence of city
planning as a profession responsible for the public good.
The birth of city planning is dated variously as 1901, with
Charles Mulford Robinson’s book, The Improvement of
Towns and Cities; as 1902 with the McMillan plan for
Washington, D.C.; as 1904 with a New York City comprehensive plan; as 1908 with popular usage of the term; and
as 1910 with the ascendance of Frederick Law Olmsted
Jr.’s vision for planning. Peterson chose 1917 as the “end
of the beginning” because it marked the point at which,
he believes, the ideal of the comprehensive plan died.
dermined by planners’ inability to implement them. Instead, planning has evolved into a piecemeal endeavor,
but one, ironically, suitable for the contemporary fragmented metropolis.
Peterson highlights three developments during the
late-nineteenth century that proved crucial to the development of city planning. The first was recognition
that sanitary reform was necessary to reduce the public health risks of crowded tenements. Second, large
parks were identified as another antidote to urban congestion, and, third, American cities were perceived as
more visually chaotic than Europe’s grand cities. The
Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and
the subsequent City Beautiful movement addressed all
three of these concerns. Civic commissions in Chicago,
Manila, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. hired architect Daniel Burnham, principal designer of the Chicago
In addition to differentiating the City Beautiful from World’s Columbian Exposition, to impose order similar
city planning, Peterson makes a somewhat forced dis- to that of the fantastical White City.
tinction between “city” planning and “urban” planning.
Burnham’s 1902 plan for Washington, D.C. was the
According to Peterson, generic urban planning refers to
watershed
event that defined, for Peterson, the birth
the broad array of ideas, techniques, and procedures by
of
city
planning.
Special purpose planning already exwhich people have shaped urban form since the founding
isted,
but
the
McMillan
Commission plan for the Disof cities. American “city” planning is a distinct chapter in
trict of Columbia marked the first time professionals apthat longer history. City planning was born during the
plied a comprehensive approach. The McMillan Plan sucProgressive Era as an effort to make existing cities function more efficiently. When it died is less clear, although cessfully combined two previously unrelated nineteenthit clearly no longer exists in its pure form. The grand century precursors: park system design and civic art.
ambitions inherent in a comprehensive vision were un- Burnham, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.,
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Charles Mulford Robinson, and John Nolen were the pioneers of this emerging planning profession.
portunistic interventions” to widen streets or establish
zoning. If the success of city planning is gauged by its
ambitions, it was a failure. But if it is measured by its incremental, small-scale achievements, as Peterson has, it
left a significant legacy.
Professionals began to refer to “city planning” in
1908 and the name was institutionalized in 1909 with the
first National Conference on City Planning (NCCP). The
NCCP sparked a battle for control between landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and housing reformer
Benjamin Marsh. Olmsted won, directing the profession
toward a broader agenda than housing. Olmsted Jr. also
believed planning was as much a process as a completed
document.
I was surprised by a few omissions from Peterson’s
account. Sanitary engineer George Waring was publishing and speaking extensively during the late-nineteenth
century, but is not mentioned in the chapter on sanitary
reform, despite his status as patron saint of the municipal housekeeping movement. And I looked in vain for
more women in the story. The settlement house moveHousing reformer Lawrence Veiller, among others, ment received a nod, but Jane Addams was credited only
criticized planning for promising more than it could dewith displaying art at Hull House, not with her endless
liver. Surveys conducted between 1917 and 1929 bore
efforts to clean up the city, both literally and figuratively.
out his assessment. Only forty-one cities adopted com- A pantheon of women reformers influenced city planprehensive city plans between 1910 and 1917. Of those, ning. Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch is mentioned, but
twenty plans had very little impact, and another fifteen Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald, Vida Scudder, and Mary Mcreported only partial fulfillment. Since all but one of the Dowell are missing. For balance, students who read Pesix successful plans was for a small town or village, they
terson’s book should also read accounts by Eugenie Ladoffered minimal instructional value for city planners in
ner Birch, Susan Wirka, and Daphne Spain.[1]
Boston or Philadelphia. The incremental approach held
more promise. When Harland Bartholomew was hired in
Although historians may appreciate the distinction
1916 by St. Louis to create a city plan, he devised sepa- between city and urban planning, the typical planning
rate studies of each city system: traffic, streets, markets, student probably would fail to grasp the subtlety. For this
recreation, housing, and public buildings. Serial imple- reason, and because of its steep price, The Birth of City
mentation of these components created an efficient traf- Planning would be a luxury in most planning courses. On
fic system for St. Louis when other downtowns were still the other hand, the book is blessedly free of postmodern
gridlocked. If D.C. marked the birth of city planning, jargon and accessible to a large audience.
St. Louis signified the shift from comprehensive to inNote
cremental approaches.
[1]. Eugenie Ladner Birch, “From Civic Worker
According to Peterson, city planning was based on
to
City
Planner: Women and Planning, 1890-1980,” in
three ideas that eroded after World War I. The first was
The
American
Planner: Biographies and Recollections, ed.
that the physical development of an existing city should
Donald Krueckeberg (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Ur(not could) be controlled by a single agency speaking for
ban Policy Research, 2nd ed. 1994); Susan Wirka, “The
the public interest and presenting a comprehensive vision. Second, essential elements of the plan, like water City Social Movement: Progressive Women Reformers
and sewage systems, zoning, highways, and rapid tran- and Early Social Planning,” in Planning the Twentiethsit, derived coherence from this vision. Third, the vision Century American City, ed. Mary Corbin Sies and
assumed the city was an interconnected, organic whole. Christopher Silver (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and, Daphne Spain, How Women
After 1917, planners abandoned the big picture out of neSaved the City (Minneapolis, MN: University of Mincessity because they had never achieved the authority to
implement it . They turned, instead, to piecemeal “op- nesota Press, 2001).
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Citation: Daphne Spain. Review of Peterson, Jon A., The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917. HUrban, H-Net Reviews. March, 2005.
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