When I taught at Arizona State University, I had the good fortune of working with many bright, motivated landscape architecture and planning students. David Alameddin was one such graduate student in the environmental planning program. Since David’s graduation, we have been working together on a research paper that explores an interesting but little know fact – in 1921, Edward Bennett (Daniel Burnham’s assistant in the preparation of the 1909 Plan of Chicago) prepared a master plan for Phoenix.

Left: A photograph of The Great Basin of the Honor Court at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition. Note the Beaux-Art design of the surrounding buildings.

The 1909 Plan of Chicago was inspired by the City Beautiful Movement. The 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition was the initiation of this movement in urban design. Some have called this an effort to build “Olympian” cities of grandeur and formality. The residents of Phoenix were not without similar aspirations to create a monumental city, although they resided in desert settlement of 30,000 at the time (Today the Phoenix Metro Area has a population of over 3.2 million). David thoroughly reviewed the content of Bennett’s Plan of Phoenix and has compared it with the earlier Plan of Chicago and the ultimate form of Phoenix. I investigated why the plan was not implemented – a confluence of social, political, and economic factors that provide an interesting perspective on the development of one Sunbelt city. We submitted a paper to the Journal of Planning History (January 2004) and the following brief abstract summarizes some of the high points.

City Beautiful Aspirations and Desert Realities in Early Phoenix

Larissa Larsen and David Alameddin

Submitted to the Journal of Planning History on January 18, 2004

Abstract

In 1921, Edward Bennett, the protégé of the White City’s lead designer, Daniel Burnham, was commissioned to create a plan that would bring City Beautiful grandeur to the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona. By highlighting the relative economic, social, and governmental conditions of Phoenix in 1921, we propose that the Plan was discounted due to the city’s early point in its evolution, its perceived and real needs for infrastructure, and its inability to see urban design as a competitive advantage in its race to become the dominant Southwestern city.

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