Had Daniel Burnham lived through the 1930s and returned to the Philippines, he would have been thrilled by what he saw. In Chicago, he’d struggled mightily for years to realize his vision (and his allies had worked for decades to do so after his death). In the Philippines, however, just half a year’s hasty work, only six weeks of it in-country, sufficed to remake one city and build another from the ground up. Such were the joys of empire. The colonies were, for men like Burnham, playgrounds, places to carry out ideas without worrying about the counterforces that encumbered action at home.
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