After the fair, he had presented ideas for improving Chicago's lakefront, and had worked on city plans for Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and San Francisco, and Manila and Baguio in the Philippines.

Charles Moore edited the finished manuscript, and renderer Jules Guérin created several bird's-eye views for the full-color document, which was printed in lavish book form and presented to the city in July 1909.

In addition, the plan detailed the consolidation of Chicago's six intercity railroad passenger terminals into new complexes west of the Loop and south of Roosevelt Road.

New wider arterials were prescribed to relieve traffic congestion and beautify the fast growing city, including a network of new diagonal streets.

With the growth in automobile usage after World War I, Chicago planners began to drastically alter or step away from Burnham's proposals for the street system.

At the east end of Congress Street, which would become the central axis of the reshaped city, Burnham proposed a cultural center in Grant Park consisting of the new Field Museum of Natural History and new homes for the Art Institute of Chicago and the Crerar Library.

They persuaded the mayor of Chicago to appoint co-author Edward H. Bennett, a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts, and he advised various public agencies as they constructed the projects recommended by the plan, using a design vocabulary reminiscent of 19th century Paris.

[2] The plan's list of big infrastructure improvements were badly needed by a rapidly growing city, at a time when an expanding tax base made it possible to undertake large projects.