Many continental cities held competitions to select designs and designers for urban expansion projects, and some British cities also followed this practice after the passage of the nation's first town planning legislation in 1909. In America, consultants prepared to elaborate plans for improving and enlarging cities, including Daniel Burnham's proposals to cut radial boulevards through the chequerboards of San Francisco and Chicago. Published accounts of these projects offered opportunities for professionals to study what had been proposed and to reflect on their merits. Most designs of that period emphasised the importance broad radial avenues or boulevards, sometimes combined with one or more ring roads.
Even members of the English Garden City movement used formal design elements in many of their plans. These included portions of Letchworth, the first garden city, Hampstead Garden Suburb, the most widely-visited example of large scale neighbourhood planning in Britain, and Ruislip, the largest town planning project prepared after passage of the first British town planning legislation in 1909.
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