Kevin Bacon's dad died a few weeks ago. To most Penn students that means very little, but to those more familiar with Philadelphia it's pretty important.
After all, there are few people who have had more of an influence on Philadelphia today than Ed Bacon, executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from from 1949-70.
Bacon gave the city many of its defining characteristics -- Society Hill, Independence Mall, Penn's Landing and Market East, just to name a few.
Awarded an honorary Penn degree in 2001, Bacon was lauded for his ability to think big, on a scale that is grander than most planners who preceded and followed him. He didn't let little things like historic buildings and heavily used roads stand in the way of his ideas. He work was indeed a lesson in macro thinking.
This proved to be Bacon's greatest weakness -- his failure to pay attention to detail. He didn't fully take into account the adverse effects of his plans. Thus, we got I-95 cutting off the city from the Delaware River; we have a cold, boxy mall in the heart of our city; and we have an ugly, gray office complex to complement the elegance of City Hall.
So how will we remember Bacon? Will he be known for his grand visions or notorious follies? I say that Bacon should, in the end, be memorialized as one of our nation's biggest dreamers. We should encourage the next generation of planners to push boundaries and think outside of the box.
And so to preserve Bacon's great legacy, the city should commission a study to revisit and update his projects. It is true that Bacon was rather finicky about the city altering his plans in the past. When Love Park was redesigned in 2002 to prevent skateboarding, Bacon protested by riding a skateboard for the first time -- at the ripe old age of 92.
But Bacon was always a man concerned with the big picture. He didn't sweat the small stuff. So this commission would not just dismiss Bacon's work. Rather, it would tinker with the existing structures to make them more suitable for modern-day Philadelphia. The commission would use Bacon's seminal 1976 work, Design of Cities, as a guide.
Bacon would not object to this simple tweaking of his plan, as even he himself pointed out failures in his designs. The most egregious was his idea to turn South Street into a highway linking I-95 and the Schuylkill Expressway, something that Bacon later admitted was a horrible idea. Luckily for Philadelphia, the proposal lowered property values, causing many artsy people to move into that neighborhood and creating the bohemian South Street we enjoy today.
At Penn Center, the commission could devise a way to alter the architecture of the bland office towers. This committee could turn the cold-swept, concrete plaza between the buildings into a more lively area. It could serve as a great place for Center City employees to eat lunch and congregate after work. The committee should not raise the height of these buildings, however, as Bacon was among the most fiercest advocates of keeping the skyline below the level of William Penn's hat atop City Hall.
An Ed Bacon Commission would also revisit the Market East concept, currently the low-end Gallery mall. When Bacon designed his plans, Philadelphia lacked a retail core. Thus, he proposed a mall with big department stores that would anchor shopping in the city.
Since Bacon released his plans, the city has seen a considerable growth in retail -- particularly along Rittenhouse Row -- and the Market East corridor has changed significantly with the development of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The Gallery's role in providing quality shopping in the city needs to be re-imagined, taking into account these changes while still sticking to Bacon's idea of anchoring the retail strip with large department stores.
Finally, the commission should address Philadelphia's ultimate sleeping giant -- Penn's Landing. Bacon saw great potential on the Delaware, but then strangled it by building I-95. The city should apply Ed Bacon-style thinking to tackling this problem, stretching the imagination with a mantra that anything is possible.
When thinking about the character of Philadelphia, we should not only think of cheesesteaks and pretzels, but also Bacon.
While the city looks back on memories of the great planner's vision, it should seize the opportunity to perfect his grandiose ideas.
David Burrick is a senior urban studies major from Short Hills, N.J., and executive editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is dburrick@sas.upenn.edu. Camp David appears on alternate Thursdays.
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