American Cosmopolis: The World's Columbian Exposition and Chicago Across the Americas

It is Chicago that now rears its own head to rule. And its confidence in its superiority over the original Atlantic states is based on a conviction that they are too reactionary, too European, too traditional.

—José Enrique Rodó Ariel (1900)¹

Observation shows us, first, that every city is a species of association, and, secondly, that all associations come into being for the sake of some good—for all men do all their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good. It is clear therefore that all associations aim at some good, and that the particular association which is the most sovereign of all, and includes all the rest, will pursue this aim most, and will thus be directed to the most sovereign of all goods. This most sovereign and inclusive association is the city, as it is called, or the political association.

—Aristotle Politics²

Envisioning the World City

In Good City Form, Kevin Lynch begins with the question, "what makes a good city?" Implicit to this question of structure and planning is the obverse, what makes a city good? Lynch is concerned with the general values associated with the spatial dimensions, organization, and form of the city. He writes: "Decisions about urban policy, or the allocation of resources, or where to move, or how to build something, must use norms about good and bad. Short-range or long-range, broad or selfish, implicit or explicit, values are an inevitable ingredient of any decision. Without some sense of better, any action is perverse. When values lie unexamined, they are dangerous."³ The meaning of "good" might be found in its linguistic tributary and symbolic counterpart of "just" or justice, following Aristotle, the good life is the just life. It is good to have clean and ordered streets because of the implicit second order of meaning in which cleanliness and order loosely index fairness and equity; where order forges equal access to all parts of the city, rather than driving people into the periphery. By lending symbolic value to the literal design of the city, the city can be read through its form. A good city is often considered a transparent political model for other cities; consumable and reproducible, its good form becomes formula.

Chicago had become a cosmopolis by globalizing its good image in the massive promotional campaign of the World's Columbus Exposition of 1893, using the signifier of hemispheric continuity—Columbus—for distribution across the Americas. No other American city had such a massive campaign prior to the United States' war with Spain, when Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines had become major pawns in the struggle for imperial dominance. The city's role in the exhibition of the world and its own advanced modernity was crucial to the rapid rise to colonial power of the United States. Chicago, by way of the World's Fair, became the first cosmopolitan-modern city and the first imperial city of the twentieth century.

Unlike other U.S. global cities, Chicago was almost entirely planned in advance, an opportunity afforded by the razing of the city after the 1871 fire. Daniel Burnam saw the ruins of a city and the marshy uncultivated land around it as an opportunity to build a utopia to be highlighted in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Burnam and his associate, Edward Bennet, drew on Haussmann's Paris and on the monumentality of L'Enfant's plans for Washington D.C.⁴ In 1902, Burnham developed the city plan for Washington D.C. Three years later, his plans for Manila and Baguio in the Philippines were approved by the War department; the Manila plan would turn this strategic center of imperial American command into a more accessible post.⁵ Each of these cities was central to U.S. military operations and economic expansion, they were designed...