06. Ludwig Hilberseimer, traffic redevelopment plan for the south side of Chicago, c.1955.
Hilberseimer was known to have summed up his philosophy on planning with one question: "should
not children go to school without crossing a street?" In a 1962 letter to Architectural Record he
writes: "Our cities are still pedestrian cities, as they were thousands of years ago. The two
elements introduced by the industrial revolutionindustry and mechanical means of
transportationhave been largely ignored in city planning." In this diagram from The Nature
of Cities (1955), Hilberseimer demonstrates the "superblock" in which existing blocks are
combined in order to keep residential areas relatively free from automobile traffic.
"Chicago Looks Ahead: 100 Years of Planning, 1909-2009," Case 4, Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, September 29–December 1, 2010
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