The 1909 Plan of Chicago as Representative Anecdote: Constituting New Citizens for the Commercial American City

Abstract

Although rhetoric and city life have been closely aligned since ancient times, urban planning documents have received little attention as rhetorical texts shaping discourse about citizenship. The Plan of Chicago, a key document in the history of US urban planning, not only proposed improvements, but, more importantly, its visual and verbal language constructed an idealized and ideologically infused conception of the city and its citizens. By enacting what Burke called a representative anecdote, the Plan constitutes a specifically commercially oriented city and citizen, foregoing other possible identifications.

Notes

1. ¹We are grateful to RR peer reviewers Jessica Enoch and David Fleming for their helpful comments in developing this article. We also thank editor Theresa Enos for her guidance throughout the process.

2. ²For more on the Progressive Era and its movements, see Page; D. Rodgers; C. Rodgers; and Scobey.

3. ³A housing reform association created by middle-class white reformers to improve housing and tenements in Chicago. See Plotkin.

4. ⁴Glass plates containing painted pictures, illustrations, or photos that, when targeted with light, produced a larger image for viewing. See “Images of the Plan.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martha S. Cheng

Martha S. Cheng’s work focuses on the constitutive power of language as it forms both individual and collective identities that are then leveraged for rhetorical and political ends. She has studied online communities, political speeches, self-help books, and public apologies. At Rollins College where she is an Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Dr. Cheng directs the First-year Writing Program, coordinates Academic and Expository Writing for the Hamilton Holt School, and currently chairs the Department of English. She can be contacted via email: [email protected].

Julian C. Chambliss

Julian C. Chambliss is Associate Professor of History at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. His teaching and research is concerned with real and imagined urban spaces in the United States. His academic writing has appeared in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Pennsylvania History, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly. He is coeditor and contributor for Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience. He is corecipient of an Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) & R1 University Mellon Foundation Collaborative Project grant and corecipient of an ACS Mellon Foundation Grant for Project Mosaic: Zora Neale Hurston.