During his tenure at the City Planning Commission Bacon and his staff conceived and implemented numerous large- and small-scale design ideas that shaped Philadelphia including Penn Center, Market East, Penn's Landing, Society Hill, Independence Mall, and the Far Northeast. The Center City Commuter Connection, a seemingly radical idea at the time, was conceived during the 1950s by Planning Commission staff member, R. Damon Childs, who succeeded Bacon as Executive Director.

Not all of the concepts that Bacon supported materialized. One proposal that he inherited from Robert Mitchell was to encircle Center City with a series of expressways, including the so-called “Crosstown Expressway” (I-695) linking the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) with the Delaware Expressway I-95 via South Street. Three of the four expressways were built; however, the Crosstown Expressway faced significant local opposition and was never built. However, a different expressway was built at Vine Street.

Unintentionally, the Crosstown Expressway proposal depressed property values and rents on South Street, precipitating changes in the neighborhood's character from largely Jewish-owned garment stores into a thriving bohemia. Other concepts conceived during Bacon's tenure, such as Schuylkill River Park included in the 1963 Center City Plan, came into being many years later.