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AICP AWARDS
In December, an AICP jury added two places and one person to its roster of national historic planning landmarks and pioneers. The jury is chaired by AICP's national planning historian, Lawrence Gerckens, FAICP. Other members are Bobby Wilson, AICP; Eugenie Ladner Birch, FAICP; Eugene Carr, AICP; Howard Foster, Jr., AICP; James McCarthy, AICP; and Christopher Silver, AICP.
The jury also agreed to support the erection of commemorative plaques in honor of the three new entries: Chicago's lakefront, the new town of Reston, Virginia, and Reston's founder, Robert E. Simon, It.
Forever open ...
At several key points in the city's history, Chicagoans took a stand to keep development off the Lake Michigan shoreline. In 1836, civic leaders refused to sell lakefront land to pay for a new shipping canal and noted on their subdivision map that the land was to remain "forever open, clear and free."
Beginning in the 1890s, catalog giant A. Montgomery Ward four times sued the city to keep the lakefront free of buildings. APA, whose east windows overlook the park and lake, is forever in his debt.
The deal was sealed in 1909, when Daniel Burnham stated unequivocally in his Plan of Chicago that "the lakefront by right belongs to the people." Years later, in 1971, the Chicago 21 plan for the central area recommended that the lakefront be designated a public use zone. "In no instance," the plan continued, "should further private development be permitted east of Lake Shore Drive." The 1973 Lakefront Protection Ordinance created a commission to review all construction proposals for the central lakefront.
In the words of the AICP jury, "the Chicago lakefront established the importance of major public open space in the development of the Chicago region and provides continuing proof of the value of aggressive and persistent vigilance in preserving a shoreline." But, as nominator Israel Stollman, FAICP, notes, "the struggle to define appropriate public uses of the lakefront is far from over."
Virginia new town
"One of the finest examples ofAmerican 20th century conceptual new town planning," the AICP jury said of Reston, Virginia. "Planned as an open and welcoming community for all people from the start," Reston is "world renowned as a thriving new community."
The new town began 40...