ABSTRACT
Urban plan-makers, like the incrementalists, were focused on the existing city. Both
cultures responded directly to existing historical precedent, such that any change
or plan made to the human landscape was conditioned by pre-existing form and
pattern. But the plan-makers were not particularly interested in small-scale, grass-
roots, incremental change in the Jeffersonian style of self-determination. They
were more Hamiltonian, seeking comprehensive solutions that were necessarily
larger in scale. This is the culture of the ‘metropolitan idea’ (Fishman, 2000, p, 82),
of Burnham, Nolen, Adams, and Moses, that was eventually either killed off by
latter-day incrementalists, or evolved into something much more policy-driven and
removed from the durable, material qualities of cities.
