Chicago I (2011)

Chicago I (2011): In the aftermath of the 2009 Plan of Chicago centennial, the studios of 2011 and 2012 revisited Daniel Burnham’s Plan to test whether classical humanist urbanism remains capable of addressing the challenges of the contemporary city. In the Fall of 2011, eight Notre Dame graduate urban design students focused primarily upon the neighborhoods and historic center of the City of Chicago, and upon suburban railroad suburbs as more compact transit-oriented towns. Students focused in groups upon city transit, parks and boulevards, re-urbanizing in-city interstate rights-of-way, and preliminary studies for form-based codes, before then undertaking a variety of individual neighborhood-design projects mostly within the city limits. The studio underscored for everyone involved the ambition and magnitude of Burnham’s 1909 Plan, and prompted the decision to devote an additional studio to extend the scope of the project to the metropolitan scale.