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some notes from
Knowles, Scott Gabriel, Ed. Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City. University of Pennsylvania, 2009.
Harris Steinberg, "Philadelphia in the Year 2059," pp. 112-144:
"Penn’s vision for Philadelphia balanced the concept of protecting the public good with private gain. His 1682 city plan, first published in 1683 to market the colony in London, was a simple Cartesian grid of streets…framing five, generous public squares. It privileged no single person; in essence, it was the nonhierarchical design of a Quaker meeting house on a city scale. What Penn called his 'greene country town' was laid out by his surveyor general Thomas Holme to reflect the highest safety and public-health standards of the day…ample-sized city lots were originally intended to be four acres in size for light, air, fire protection, and orchards…Penn bordered the north and west of his city with verdant liberty lands, a green belt around the city in which 'First Purchasers' received land both outside the city proper and a city lot. This established the precedent  for the city’s incomparable park systems….Most notably, his five squares…were leading-edge public spaces in an era of monarchy and prestige….he created a physical plan for his city that became a prototype for the quintessential American city plan—the archetypal urban gird that marched westward as the city and the nation expanded. This relationship between democracy and physical planning was critical to Philadelphia’s success from the beginning….

…the great French architect Paul Philippe Cret did more to affect the physical face of Philadelphia than any other architect or planner besides William Penn…Cret...oversaw the design of many municipal works…His remarkable legacy includes Rittenhosue Square…the Benjamin Franklin Bridge…the Federal Reserve Bank…the Barnes Foundation…and the gracious Rodin Museum…the 1927 Wissahickon Memorial Bridge on Henry Avenue demonstrates the power and poetry of Cret’s contributions to place-making in Philadelphia…Edmund Bacon assumed the Cret mantle just as Philadelphia was unknowingly entering a long period of decline….swimming against a tide that could not be held back with physical planning alone…editing the grid..in ways that were often not successful…."

"The Site Plan," illustration from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 1963,
"The Plan for Center City Philadelphia."