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In the mid-twentieth century, as Americans abandoned city centers in droves to pursue picket-fenced visions of suburbia, architect and urban planner Edmund Bacon turned his sights on shaping urban America. As director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Bacon forged new approaches to neighborhood development and elevated Philadelphia's image to the level of great world cities. Urban development came with costs, however, and projects that displaced residents and replaced homes with highways did not go uncriticized, nor was every development that Bacon envisioned brought to fruition. Despite these challenges, Bacon oversaw the planning and implementation of dozens of redesigned urban spaces: the restored colonial neighborhood of Society Hill, the new office development of Penn Center, and the transit-oriented shopping center of Market East.
Ed Bacon is the first biography of this charismatic but controversial figure. Gregory L. Heller traces the trajectory of Bacon's two-decade tenure as city planning director, which coincided with a transformational period in American planning history. Edmund Bacon is remembered as a larger-than-life personality, but in Heller's detailed account, his successes owed as much to his savvy negotiation of city politics and the pragmatic particulars of his vision. In the present day, as American cities continue to struggle with shrinkage and economic restructuring, Heller's insightful biography reveals an inspiring portrait of determination and a career-long effort to transform planning ideas into reality.
- Sales Rank: #1420337 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-03-23
- Released on: 2013-03-23
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"Gregory Heller's Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia provides a thorough, engaging, and compelling story about the career of Philadelphia's most prominent urban planner. . . . The book's content is extremely well documented and provides the reader with a new perspective on many of the city's rather famous midcentury plans and development projects. Aside from the rich historical narrative, which is valuable in and of itself, the book succeeds at making clear connections to contemporary planning practice. . . . A terrific contribution to the literature on planning history, the politics of urban planning and development, and the value of physical planning."—Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, Journal of Planning Education and Research
"Edmund Bacon, probably the most relentless and determined of all planners, believed that the most important and difficult thing to do was deciding what to advocate and that the trick in making that decision was selecting something that you could bring to fruition. . . . We are fortunate in having this stunning biography by Gregory Heller. The result is an engrossing story explaining how modern Philadelphia took shape."—From the Foreword, by Alexander Garvin
"Heller's book gives us a fascinating—and sympathetic—account of Bacon's accomplishments."—The New Republic
About the Author
Gregory L. Heller is Executive Director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. His writing on city planning has appeared in Next American City, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Alexander Garvin is President of AGA Public Realm Strategists, Inc., and author of several books, including The American City: What Works, What Doesn't.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Foreword
Alexander Garvin
Ask most people who lived in Philadelphia during the second half of the twentieth century who was responsible for downtown Philadelphia and they will answer correctly: Edmund Bacon. But when you ask them what he did and how he did it, they usually cannot answer. Ask them about his work outside downtown and even fewer have anything to say. This book, for the first time, provides the answers. This is particularly important because Bacon, like Robert Moses in New York, worked hard at creating a legend that helped him to get things done, but has muddied the waters ever since.
I was fortunate to befriend Ed Bacon during the final ten years of his life. I spent four or five days annually walking around Philadelphia with him, listening to his stories about the city he so passionately loved. Each time my visit began at his house on Locust Street. The first time he opened the door, without even saying hello, he exclaimed, "You have written about me better than anybody else, without ever even talking with me." He was referring to my book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't. In an astonished tone of voice, I replied, "I walked all over the city at different times of the day, in different seasons, over many years." He immediately challenged me to go for a walk. As we walked around the city, he showed me many things of which I was unaware and explained much that I had not understood. I decided to return again and again and get him to tell me everything he could remember.
During my walks and talks with Ed Bacon, he was eager to impress on me that successful planning had to be based on:
- A deep and evolving understanding of the city
- A total vision for the city
- A public realm strategy for its improvement
- A convincing vision of a better future
- A marketing program
- Ongoing public support
- Tenacity in the pursuit of one's goals
I now understand why we went on all those walks. Without ever saying so explicitly, Ed wanted me to understand the importance of pedestrian circulation and of what I now call "the public realm approach to planning." He said he "walked and walked until I had the concept in my body." He had taken me on all those walks because he wanted me also to walk and walk until I had the concept in my body.
Bacon explained that he was able to make things happen because he took "the multiplicity of wills that constitutes our contemporary democratic process" and proposed a program that could "coalesce into positive, unified action on a scale large enough to change substantially the character of the city." When I asked him how he devised that program, he replied that he had what he called a "total vision of the city." He promoted ideas to achieve that total vision, but "promoted," in this instance, is a term of art because, although Ed was clearly responsible for what happened, he had no specific role within the entities that developed physical projects.
At a time when countless city dwellers were escaping to the suburbs, Bacon understood that residences were an integral part of any healthy downtown. Thus, the restoration of Society Hill as one of Philadelphia's thriving residential neighborhoods became a central feature of this total vision. He explained, "I set the concept; then it was adjusted by others as required by the realities of the situation." Therein lies the explanation of Edmund Bacon's amazing ability to make things happen without actually doing anything himself. It was not, however, because he gave up any role in what happened.
As usual, Bacon was as accurate as he was misleading when he intimated that all he did was "set the concept" and left the rest to developers, property owners, lending institutions, and government officials. Persistence is as important as letting others get some of the credit for implementing an agreed-upon vision. Edmund Bacon, probably the most relentless and determined of all planners, believed that the most important and difficult thing to do was deciding what to advocate and that the trick in making that decision was selecting something that you could bring to fruition. He used to say that, once you decided that something was the right thing to do, you had to devise "your own approach" to getting it done "without giving a damn about other people's ideas." That, too, was misleading because he was always concerned about developing a constituency for his proposals. That is why he also told me that, whenever he said anything, he "always thought about what it would look like as a headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer."
Certainly, determining what Edmund Bacon thought is as difficult as discovering what he did and how he did it. We are fortunate in having this stunning biography by Gregory Heller—fortunate because he knew Ed Bacon well and spent much of the years since Ed died trying to piece together what actually happened. The result is an engrossing story explaining how modern Philadelphia took shape.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Essential Reading on the Modern History of Philadelphia
By Paul R. Steinke
Gregory Heller's biography of Edmund Bacon is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the 20th century history of Philadelphia. This highly readable book is full of fascinating insights into Mr. Bacon's career and character, their interplay with local and Federal politics, and the changing role of the city planning profession. Mr. Heller demonstrates how these factors impacted the city's built environment over parts of six decades and provides important context in understanding the shape of the modern city.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A critical read for planners, and Philadelphia history buffs...
By urbanursus
Heller shines light on a critical moment in Philadelphia (and Urban America's) history; its massive post war urban redevelopment program. Philadelphians know that Ed Bacon, popularly considered Philadelphia's Robert Moses and Ed Logue, was important; they just never quite understand what he did. Heller does a masterful job of telling Bacon's story and explaining his impact on Philly. In doing so he shines a light on the limits of planning, but also details the power of vision in setting the agenda. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand modern Philadelphia or the complexities of the urban planning process.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
If you ever wondered why Philadelphia looks the way it does, read this!
By Vince
This book is a great overview of the development of Center City Philadelphia, related by way of an insightful biographical account of a very complex and visionary person who exerted great influence during his years in and out of city government. Lots of behind the scenes stories which shed light on many local politicos and how things actually got done in Philly in the 40's through 70's.
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