A biography is crucial to understanding where the city stands today - and where we might go from here. Operating in the master-builder tradition, Bacon essentially used the force of his personality to prod a crumbling, has-been, industrial city into accepting the redevelopment he believed would reposition it for a modern future - tearing down the "Chinese Wall" railroad viaduct to build a modern office district, revitalizing Society Hill to preserve middle-class living in Center City, creating the nation's first urban mall. We don't have enough corporate giants headquartered here, or enough of the philanthropists who trail in their wake.īut the most inexplicable shortcoming, it's always seemed to me, was that there's no biography of Edmund Bacon.īacon was not merely the greatest urban planner Philadelphia ever produced, he was also one of the greatest characters to figure on the city stage in the 20th century. It doesn't regularly produce winning sports teams. It is not easy being stuck midway between the nation's financial and political capitals. Philadelphia is a city that struggles with certain disadvantages.
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