Missiles in the White City : how governments creatively destroyed Chicago's Jackson Park three times in 80 years

Abstract

Jackson Park, located on Chicago's South Side, has been a touchstone for the city's residents since the 1890s. The park has a rich history: The site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, an island of green in the city and as an anti-aircraft missile base. But those changes have come at the behest of governments and the park's role has changed as the priorities and values of those governments have evolved. This thesis examined the change in landscape through the lens of the economic theory of creative destruction, which had only been applied to entrepreneurial landscape changes previously. It applied a three-step test to determine whether or not creative destruction could be applied to government-driven landscape changes.