On the Map: Project Management Chicago Style

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Topics: PM Network

Poet Carl Sandburg described Chicago as the “city of the big shoulders” in reference to the brawny workers who toiled in the stockyards and meatpacking plants that made the city famous as the “hog butcher for the world.” Through the first half of the 20th century, Chicago lived up to that name. Delivery of livestock was facilitated by the city’s location in the heart of the United States. Yet Chicago’s working-class image was often overshadowed by something more sinister. Mentioning Chicago to anyone who didn’t live there usually prompted a pantomime of a hunched-over gangster shooting a gun. “Ack-ack-ack! Al Capone!” The city seemed saddled with gangsters and political corruption.

But along with its gangster roots, Chicago also has a long history for thinking big—the city was home to both the first Ferris wheel and the first skyscraper. Chicago architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham is quoted as saying, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” In the early 1900s, Mr. Burnham was one of the key forces behind “The Plan for Chicago,” which was hailed as the first example of a widespread city planning document in the United States. A comprehensive and visionary plan for controlled urban growth, it envisioned …

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