In 1900, most Chicago neighborhoods were densely packed. That year, its residents numbered nearly 1,700,000 and densities in certain neighborhoods, such as the Near West Side, averaged more than 100 persons per acre (64,000 per square mile). Civic reformers concluded that poor planning led to squalid conditions, overcrowding, and slums. Pollution and smoke made it hard to breathe and left sooty deposits on the city's buildings. In the older and denser parts of the city, building codes went unenforced, and poorly constructed or dilapidated structures threatened the safety of families. Dead horses, animal manure, and open privies spread disease. Congested streets made it difficult to get around, impeded commerce, and muddled the economic circulation of city life.

Chicagoans were not unique in their desire to make their city more beautiful and hospitable. Indeed, they were part of a growing “City Beautiful” movement that swept across the United States during the first decades of the twentieth century. Most “City Beautiful” advocates were alarmed at the country’s rapid industrialization and expansion, which they believed came at the expense of physical beauty and people’s moral and physical well being. In cities like Chicago, citizens formed improvement associations to lobby for city parks and keep streets clear of sewage and trash. Drawing connections between crowded urban spaces and social ills, activists reasoned that a clean and beautiful city would have less crime, juvenile delinquency, and disease. Nationally, this movement eventually inspired the creation of hundreds of city and county parks and forests, often with the desire to preserve these lands in their “primitive” or “original” state.

Some worked to improve crowded neighborhood conditions. The volunteer residents of Hull-House, who, under the leadership of Jane Addams, established the first public playground on Chicago’s west side, were one example. Others sought a more comprehensive vision for Chicago. Architects Dwight Perkins and Daniel Burnham, for instance, drew plans that conceptualized the city on a larger scale than what Addams and her colleagues did at the neighborhood level. As members of Hull-House toiled at recreating the inner city with parks and recreational spots, Perkins and his colleagues thought about recreating the city by planning for population movement decades in the future. Together, planners like Perkins and activists like Addams were able to convince residents and, more important, city and county officials to build more parks in the city and an “outer parks,” or preserve, system outside the city.