ABSTRACT
Chapter three, “Landscape: The Burnham Plans and American landscape imperialism in Manila and Baguio,” revisits a signature moment of the early colonial regime when the famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham travelled to the Philippines (in 1904–1905) to redesign the colonial capital of Manila and, to his greater delight, produce a town plan along City Beautiful lines for the new summer capital and mountain retreat. Focusing on efforts to realize a formal vision of American colonial life in the Philippines through conventions of landscape and urban planning, the chapter traces the aesthetic dimensions of U.S. imperialism through the collaboration of Burnham and Forbes, then Commissioner for Commerce and Police, and through Forbes's continuing efforts (working with Insular architect William Parsons) to realize elements of the Burnham Plans in Manila and Baguio during his career as Governor-General. Focusing on the design of three iconic (and elite) aesthetic landscapes—the “New Luneta” on the backfilled Manila waterfront, the Plan for Baguio, and Forbes's own private “Topside” estate, located spectacularly on a ridge above Baguio—the chapter explores the implications of the regime's emphasis on distributing things “beautifully, conveniently and expediently” in space amid wider transformations of the Philippine polity, environment, and space economy.
