Blair Kamin (Chicago Tribune) piece on the National Mall

Tens of thousands gather on the National Mall during the U.S. Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, January 20, 2009. U.S. President Barack Obama became first African-American to be elected to the office of President in the history of the United States. Reuters photo.

See "The sight Obama saw: How Daniel Burnham and his planners from the Chicago fair remade the National Mall" from the Chicago Tribune's Skyline blog on architecture.

Of course, Jane Jacobs had some "bad things" to say about the City Beautiful movement, which if you think about how Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and 15th Street is mostly deader than a doornail, makes sense.

These days, we're also concerned about "overuse" of the National Mall--how it wasn't built to be able to sustain the usage it experiences.

-- National Park Service website, National Mall plan


Spectators sit in trash and debris along the National Mall after the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC. Obama became the first African-American to be sworn in as president in the history of the United States. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)