This fall, Chicagoans are turning to a Northwestern professor’s book to learn about the origins of the city they know and love.
As part of the centennial celebration of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 “Plan of Chicago,” the Chicago Public Library chose NU Prof. Carl Smith’s book, “The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City,” as the fall 2009 selection for its One Book, One Chicago program, said program Director Annie Tully.
Smith said his book, published in 2006, is a “comprehensive history of the plan of Chicago,” covering circumstances that led up to the creation of the plan, its implementation and the continuing impact of the plan today.
“The ‘Plan of Chicago’ provides an inspiration, and it gives lessons on what to avoid,” Smith said. “But the most important thing is that it makes us think about the role that we have in the future.”
One Book, One Chicago was launched in fall 2001 with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” as its first selection. Since then, a different book has been chosen in the fall and spring each year by a library committee.
The books selected so far by One Book, One Chicago have covered a wide range of topics and genres, including novels from different time periods, plays, collections of short stories and works of non-fiction. What all of the selections have in comMonday, Tully said, is the potential to appeal to a diverse audience and promote conversations about relevant modern issues.
“(The Library) attracts a diverse cross-section of the city, so any book we choose we want to appeal to all of Chicago,” she said.
Smith’s book met this criteria due to Chicago residents’ overwhelming interest in their city.”Chicago is one of those cities with a lot of civic pride,” Tully said. “When there is an anniversary like (the centennial of the Burnham plan), people want to know.”
Smith said the selection of his book by such a popular program was a “remarkable honor” and he has been “very impressed by the interest in history and city planning (in Chicago).”
NU’s more recently developed program, One Book One Northwestern, launched in fall 2006, has a mission similar to that of the Chicago program, said One Book One Northwestern Project coordinator Jeff Henderson. He added there was an overlap in the books chosen by the two programs in 2007 with James Baldwin’s “Go Tell it on The Mountain.”
“The premise (of One Book One Northwestern) is to pick a topic that is of significance right now – whether politically, economically or socially, and to encourage conversation about that topic,” Henderson said.
This year’s topic was sustainability, with the conversation being launched by the book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” by Thomas Friedman.
Both programs seek to involve as many people as possible from their respective communities, something Henderson said he expects is much more logistically difficult on the scale of the city of Chicago than in NU’s relatively “tight-knit” community.
For each One Book, One Chicago selection, the Chicago Public Library purchases a “couple thousand” copies to distribute to its branches throughout the city, Tully said. Local bookstores also order extra copies of the program’s selections because many participants choose to buy their own copy.
One way the library assesses involvement in the program is by looking at attendance at program events. In the case of Smith’s book, Tully said programming has been “over-the-top successful.”
“The Olympic bid definitely put the topic of city planning in the air,” she said. “People were thinking about the issues of transportation and housing and how all of this gets paid for. There are many parallels to 100 years ago.”
