The colored in roads were suggested by Burnham to be widened.
This was Burnham's plan for a new city center
This shows the Burnham's planned density of downtown Chicago.
One of the ideas presented in the Burnham Plan was widening roads, and making highways Widening the roads was one of the biggest ideas in the plan due to private cars using the roads causing extra traffic."The first of the bond issues, and the first of many Plan -supported street-widening projects, involved the reconstruction of Twelfth Street or Roosevelt Road...Two other major street projects involved Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive (Implementation)". "Inspired by the Plan but motivated by the growth in auto traffic, the city widened or opened 120 miles of streets between 1915 and 1931 (The Plan of Chicago. A Brief Summary)" The idea of highways was ahead of it's time with cheaper automobiles being manufactured by Ford less than a year earlier. An example fo a road being widened is Michigan Avenue. The Burnham Plan illistrated how the road would become the Magnificent Mile, a road of commercial industry, and a public tourist location. "The ‘Chicago Plan’ was devised by local planners to transform Michigan Avenue from an Indian trading post into a major commercial boulevard. After widening the street and constructing a bridge, the developers envisioned an Avenue similar to the Champs-Élysées in Paris which seemingly stretched to infinity." (The Magnificent Mile Association) "The Plan of Chicago outlined an ambitious scheme for a metropolitan highway system. Like most of their contemporaries Burnham and Bennett thought that the automobile was primarily for leisure. But they also saw its potential for local transport and commercial traffic." (Burnham Plan Centennial Committee) Daniel Burnham explained the idea of a highways in a sppech where he said, "It needs no argument to show that direct highways leading from the outlying towns to Chicago as the center are of necessity for both; and it is also apparent that suburban towns should be connected with one another in the best manner. Isolated communities lack those social and commercial advantages which arise from easy communication one with another." (Encyclopedia of Chicago)