Home > Grid plan

The grid plan dates from antiquity and was a common tool of Roman city planning, based originally on its use in military camps. One of the most striking extant Roman grid patterns can be found in the ruins of Timgad in modern-day Algeria. The Roman grid is characterized by a nearly perfectly orthogonal layout of streets, all crossing each other at right angles, and by the presence of two main streets, set at right angles from each other and called the cardo and the decumanus.

The grid plan became popular again with the start of the Renaissance in Europe. In 1606, the newly founded city of Mannheim in GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east was the first Renaissance city laid out on the grid plan. Later came the New Town in EdinburghArthur's Seat. See also for a panoramic view from Holyrood Park towards Ocean Terminal. Edinburgh (pronounced ED-in-burra ( SAMPA: ["Ed@n%b@r@])), Dun Eideann in Scottish Gaelic, is a major and historic city on the east coast of Scotland on the south shor, and many new townA New town or planned community or planned city is a city, town, or community that was designed from scratch, and grew up more or less following the plan. Many of the world's capital cities are planned cities, notably Washington, DC in the United States,s and cities in AustraliaAustralia is the sixth-largest country in the world (geographically), the only one to occupy an entire continent, and the largest in the region of Australasia. Australia includes the island of Tasmania, which is an Australian State. Its neighbouring count, the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in and CanadaCanada historically the Dominion of Canada is the second-largest, and northernmost, country in the world. It is a decentralized federation of 10 provinces and 3 territories, governed as a constitutional monarchy, and formed in 1867 through an act of Confe. Older towns in these former British colonies, such as those in New EnglandThis article is about the region in the United States of America. For other uses, see New England (disambiguation . The New England region of the United States is located in the northeastern corner of the country. Boston is its business and cultural cente are much less likely to use a grid plan. Often, some of the streets in a grid are numbered (First, Second, etc.), lettered, or arranged in alphabetical order. ( Washington, DCWashington, DC officially the District of Columbia (also known as DC Washington and, historically, the Federal City is the capital city and administrative district of the United States of America. Residents of the city and its surrounding suburbs refer to has examples of all three). The plan was also applied in the new cities founded by the Spanish colonization of the Americas, after the test in La Laguna (Canary Islands).

Arguably the most famous grid plan in history is the plan for New York City formulated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, a visionary proposal by the state legislature of New York for the development of most of upper Manhattan.

In the westward development of the United States, the use of the grid plan was nearly universal in the construction of new towns. One of the largest advantages of the adoption of grid plan was that allowed the rapid subdivision and auction of a large parcel of land. For example, when the legislature of the Republic of Texas decided in 1839 to move the capital to the new site along the Colorado River, the functioning of the government required the rapid population of the town, which was named Austin. Charged with the task, Edwin Waller designed a fourteen block grid that fronted the river on 640 acres (2.6 km²). After surveying the land, Waller organized the sale of 306 lots nearly immediately, and by the end of the year the entire Texas government had arrived by oxcart to the new site.

The use of the grid on the American frontier was not, however, strictly functional. In the case of Austin, Waller designed a broad north-south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue , that bisected the grid leading up from the river to the site where the new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. The main east-west thoroughfare was Pecan Street, later renamed Sixth Street . The two thoroughfares have remained the primary arteries through downtown to this day, illustrating a successful adaption of the Roman plan to the New World.