Daniel Burnham - The Chicago Plan

The Plan for Chicago: Daniel Burnham

Overview article in New Yorker this week.

Most important of all, a hundred years ago, in 1909, Burnham completed work on a document with the unassuming title “Plan of Chicago” that remains the most effective example of large-scale urban planning America has ever seen ... Assisted by the young city planner Edward H. Bennett, he laid out the shorefront of Lake Michigan, quadrupling the amount of parkland and thus insuring that the lakefront would forever be public open space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham#City_planning_and_.22The_Plan_of_Chicago.22

... everyone should be within walking distance of a park...