A simple grid plan road map (Windermere, Florida).

The grid plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. Download high resolution version (1392x1072, 515 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1392x1072, 515 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Windermere town hall Windermere is a town located in Orange County, Florida. ... Night view of Taipei City. ... A street in Ynysybwl, Wales, typical of a small town A street is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. ... This article is about angles in geometry. ...

Ancient grid plans

The grid plan dates from antiquity; some of the earliest planned cities were built using grids.

By 2600 BC, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa of the Indus Valley Civilization (in Pakistan and North India) were built with blocks divided by a grid of straight streets, laid out in perfect right angles, running north-south and east-west. Each block was subdivided by small lanes. The streets of these major cities were laid out in a perfect grid pattern, comparable to that of present day New York City. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the world's first metropolises. (Redirected from 2600 BC) (27th century BC - 26th century BC - 25th century BC - other centuries) (4th millennium BC - 3rd millennium BC - 2nd millennium BC) Events 2900 - 2334 BC – Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period. ... Mohenjo-daro (literally, mound of the dead), like Harappa, was a city of the Indus Valley civilization. ... Conception of ancient Harappas Mound E Gateway [1] Harappa is a city in Punjab, northeast Pakistan, located beside a former course of the Ravi River; about 35km southwest of Sahiwal. ... The Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1500 BCE) was an ancient civilization thriving along the Indus River and the Ghaggar-Hakra River in what is now Pakistan and Northern India. ... A map showing North India North India is a geographic and linguistic-cultural region of India. ... Nickname The Big Apple, The Capital of the World [1], Gotham Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area  - City    - Land    - Water  - Urban  - Metro 1,214. ... Conception of ancient Harappas Mound E Gateway [1] Harappa is a city in Punjab, northeast Pakistan, located beside a former course of the Ravi River; about 35km southwest of Sahiwal. ... Mohenjo-daro (literally, mound of the dead), like Harappa, was a city of the Indus Valley civilization. ... A metropolis (in Greek metera = mother and polis = city/town) is a major city (nowadays in most cases with a population of at least one million), which is a significant economical, political and cultural center for some country or region, and usually an important hub for international connections and communications. ...

A workers' village at Giza, Egypt (2570-2500 BC), housed a rotating labor force and was laid out in blocks of long galleries separated by streets in a formal grid. Many pyramid-cult cities used a common orientation: a north-south axis from the royal palace and an east-west axis from the temple meeting at a central plaza where King and God merged and crossed. The Great Sphinx of Giza with Khafres pyramid in the background. ...

Hammurabi (17th century BC) was a king of the Babylonian Empire who made Babylon one of the greatest metropolises in antiquity. He rebuilt Babylon, building and restoring temples, city walls, public buildings, and building canals for irrigation. The streets of Babylon were wide and straight, intersected approximately at right angles, and were paved with bricks and bitumen. This diorite head is believed to represent king ˤAmmurāpi Hammurabi (Akkadian, from Amorite ˤAmmurāpi, The Kinsman is a Healer (ˤAmmu paternal kinsman + Rāpi healer); also transliterated Ammurapi, Hammurapi or Khammurabi) was the sixth king of Babylon. ... Babylonia, named for its capital city, Babylon, was an ancient state in the south part of Mesopotamia (in modern Iraq), combining the territories of Sumer and Akkad. ... Babylon is the Greek variant of Akkadian Babilu (bāb-ilû, meaning Gateway of the god, translating Sumerian Kadingirra), an ancient city in Mesopotamia (modern Al Hillah, Iraq). ... Ancient history is the study of significant cultural and political events from the beginning of human history until the Early Middle Ages. ... Bitumen Bitumen is a category of organic liquids that are highly viscous, black, sticky and wholly soluble in carbon disulfide. ...

The tradition of grid plans is continuous in China from the 15th century BC onward. Guidelines put into written form in the Kaogong ji during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) stated: "a capital city should be square on plan. Three gates on each side of the perimeter lead into the nine main streets that crisscross the city and define its grid-pattern. And for its layout the city should have the Royal Court situated in the south, the Marketplace in the north, the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the east and the Altar to the Gods of Land and Grain in the west." The Spring and Autumn Period (Chinese: 春秋時代; Hanyu Pinyin: ) represented an era in Chinese history between 722 BC and 481 BC. The period takes its name from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the period whose authorship was traditionally attributed to Confucius. ...

The first planned Greek city was probably Miletus, built after 479 BC. Its gridded design has been credited to Hippodamus (although this may be apocryphal), a Greek intellectual associated with the Pythagoreans. The grid plan was a common tool of Roman city planning, based originally on its use in military camps known as castra. 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. Miletus was an ancient city on the western coast of Anatolia (in what is now the Aydin Province of Turkey), near the mouth of the Maeander River. ... Hippodamus of Miletus (sometimes also called Hippodamos), was a Greek architect of the 5th century BC. It was he who introduced order and regularity into the planning of cities, in place of the previous intricacy and confusion. ... The Pythagoreans were a Hellenic organization of astronomers, musicians, mathematicians, and philosophers who believed that all things are, essentially, numeric. ... The Roman Forum was the central area around which ancient Rome developed. ... Urban, city, or town planning, deals with design of the built environment from the municipal and metropolitan perspective. ... Originally a castrum is a celtic fortification, which is like a round walled castle in the top of a hill. ... Timgad (called Thamugas by the Romans, located at 35°27′ N 6°38′ E) was a Roman colonial town in North Africa founded by the Emperor Trajan around 100 CE. The ruins are noteworthy for being one of the best extant examples of the grid plan as used in Roman... In mathematics, orthogonal is synonymous with perpendicular when used as a simple adjective that is not part of any longer phrase with a standard definition. ... For the crustacean genus Cardus, see Polychelidae. ... In Roman city planning, a Decumanus Maximus was an east-west-oriented road in a Roman city, military camp, or colonia. ...

Teotihuacan, near modern-day Mexico City, is the largest ancient grid-plan site in the Americas. By 150 AD, the city's grid covered eight square miles. Teotihuacan was the largest Pre-Columbian known city in the Americas, and the name Teotihuacan is used to refer to the civilization this city dominated, which at its greatest extent included most of Mesoamerica. ... Mexico City (Spanish: Ciudad de México, México D.F. or simply México, pronounced /mexiko/ in IPA) is the capital and largest city of the nation of Mexico. ... World map showing the Americas The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere consisting of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. ...

Asia from the first millennium AD

As Japan and the Korean peninsula became politically centralized in the 7th century AD, those societies adopted Chinese grid-planning principles in numerous locations. In Korea, Gyeongju, the capital of Unified Silla, and Sanggyong, the capital of Balhae, adapted the Tang Dynasty Chinese model. The ancient capitals of Japan, such as Fujiwara-Kyô (694-710 AD), Nara (Heijô-Kyô, 710-784 AD), and Heian-Kyô (794-1868 AD) also adapted from Tang's capital. The grid-planning tradition in Asia continued through the beginning of the 20th century. The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. ... Gyeongju is a city (see Subdivisions of South Korea) and prominent tourist destination in eastern South Korea. ... Unified Silla is the name often applied to the Korean kingdom of Silla after 668. ... Alternate meaning: Bohai Sea Balhae (Korean) or Bohai (Chinese) was a kingdom in northeast Asia from AD 698 to 926, occupying parts of Manchuria, northern Korea, and Russian Far East. ... For the band, see Tang Dynasty (band). ...

Europe and its colonies

New European towns were planned using grids beginning in the 12th century, most prodigiously in the bastides of southern France that were built during the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval European new towns using grid plans were widespread, ranging from Wales to the Florentine region. Many were built on ancient grids originally established as Roman colonial outposts. This article is about the continent. ... For an explanation of often confusing terms such as Great Britain, Britain, United Kingdom, England and Wales and England, see British Isles (terminology). ... Florence (Italian, Firenze) is a city in the center of Tuscany, in central Italy, on the Arno River, with a population of around 400,000, plus a suburban population in excess of 200,000. ...

The Roman model was also used in Spanish fortification settlements during the Reconquista of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was subsequently applied in the new cities established during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, after the founding of La Laguna (Canary Islands) in 1496. In 1573, King Phillip II of Spain compiled the Laws of the Indies to guide the construction and administration of colonial communities. The Laws specified a square or rectangular central plaza with eight principal streets running from the plaza's corners. Hundreds of grid-plan communities throughout the Americas were established according to this pattern, echoing the practices of earlier Indian civilizations. The Reconquista (Reconquest) refers to the process for which the Christian Kingdoms of northern Hispania, defeated and conquered the southern Muslim and moorish states of the Iberian Peninsula, which the Muslims had taken by force from Christian hands in 711. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... San Cristóbal de La Laguna (La Laguna for short, Spanish for The Lagoon) is a municipality of the northern part of the island of Tenerife in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife province, on the Canary Islands. ...

The grid plan became popular with the start of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. In 1606, the newly founded city of Mannheim in Germany was the first Renaissance city laid out on the grid plan. Later came the New Town in Edinburgh and almost the entire city centre of Glasgow, and many new towns and cities in Australia, the United States and Canada. In the traditional view, the Renaissance is understood as an historical age that was preceded by the Middle Ages and followed by the Reformation. ... Basic information Country: Germany Federal state: Land Baden-Württemberg Regions: Rhein-Neckar District: Independent municipality Population: 324,787 (Mai 2005) Additional information Area: 144. ... Edinburgh (pronounced ; Dùn Èideann () in Scottish Gaelic) is the second-largest city in Scotland and the countrys capital city. ... For other uses, see Glasgow (disambiguation). ... A new town, 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. ...

Early United States

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. Nickname The Big Apple, The Capital of the World [1], Gotham Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area  - City    - Land    - Water  - Urban  - Metro 1,214. ... An 1807 version of the Commissioners Grid plan for Manhattan, a few years before it was adopted in 1811. ... Joyce Rollins is a lesbian. ... A legislature is a governmental deliberative assembly with the power to adopt laws. ... Official language(s) None, English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq. ... The Borough of Manhattan, highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ...

Often, some of the streets in a grid are numbered (First, Second, etc.), lettered, or arranged in alphabetical order. (Washington, DC has examples of all three). Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United...

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 the grid plan was that it 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 (exactly 1 square mile; about 2.6 sq km). 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 at the new site. An auctioneer and her assistants scan the crowd for bidders An auction is the process of buying and selling things by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder. ... Official language English (de facto) Spanish, French, German and Native American languages regionally Capital Washington-on-the-Brazos (1836) Harrisburg (1836) Galveston (1836) Velasco (1836) Houston (1837–1839) Austin (1839–1845) Largest city San Antonio de Béxar Presidents David G. Burnet, Sam Houston, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Anson Jones Area... 1839 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... The Colorado River as it winds through the Austin area. ... Nickname: Live Music Capital of the World, ATX Official website: www. ... Judge Edwin Waller (November 4, 1800-January 3, 1881) was an entrepreneur, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, the first mayor of Austin, Texas and the designer of its downtown grid plan. ...

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. Downtown Austin and the State Capitol as seen from the Congress Avenue Bridge over Town Lake Congress Avenue is the Main Street of Austin, Texas. ... The Texas State Capitol, located in Austin, Texas, is the fourth building to serve as the seat of Texas government. ... 6th Street is a street in Austin, Texas. ...

Late 19th century to the present

Ildefonso Cerdá defined a concept of urban planning, based on the grid, that he applied to the Barcelona Eixample. Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer (in Catalan) or Ildefonso Cerdá y Suñer (in Spanish) (December 23, 1815 - August 21, 1876) was the progressive Catalan urban planner who designed the 19th-century extension of Barcelona called the Eixample (in Catalan) or Ensanche (in Spanish). ... Barcelona is the capital city of Catalonia, an autonomous community in Spain. ... The Eixample (Catalan for extension; Castilian, Ensanche) is a district of Barcelona between the old city (Ciutat Vella) and what were once surrounding small towns (Sants, Gràcia, Sant Andreu etc. ...

If one were to look at maps of larger American cities, it can be noted that the downtown areas are almost always grids, while the farther you get from the downtown the grid becomes less prevalent and the randomness of suburbia takes over.

In the United States, the grid system was widely used in most major cities and their suburbs until the 1960s. However, during the 1920s, the rapid adoption of the automobile caused a panic among urban planners, who claimed that speeding cars would eventually kill tens of thousands of small children per year. They called for an inwardly focused "superblock" arrangement that minimized through automobile traffic and discouraged it from traveling on anything but arterial roads; traffic generators, such as apartment complexes and shops, would be restricted to the edges of the superblock, along the arterial. This paradigm prevailed between approximately 1930 and 1960, especially in Los Angeles, where notable examples include Leimert Park (an early example) and Panorama City (a late-period one). Housing subdivision near Union, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Urban planning is concerned with the ordering and design of settlements, from the smallest towns to the worlds largest cities. ... A superblock is either of the following: A type of city block that is much larger than a traditional city block; or A feature of the Unix File System. ... An arterial road is a high-capacity road which is just below a highway level of service. ... Nickname City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Government Country State County United States California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area  - City    - Land    - Water  - Urban 1,290. ... Leimert Park is a neighborhood in southwestern Los Angeles, California. ... Panorama City is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley district of Los Angeles, California. ...

In the 1960s, traffic engineers and urban planners abandoned the grid virtually wholesale in favor of a "street hierarchy." This is a thoroughly "asymmetric" street arrangement in which a residential subdivision--often surrounded by a noise wall or a security gate--is completely separated from the road network except for one or two connections to arterial roads. In a way, this is a return to medieval styles: as noted in Spiro Kostof's seminal history of urban design, The City Shaped, there is a strong resemblance between the street arrangements of modern American suburbs and those of medieval Arab and Moorish cities. In each case, the community unit at hand--the clan or extended family in the Muslim world, the economically homogeneous subdivision in modern suburbia--isolates itself from the larger urban scene by using dead ends and culs-de-sac. The term traffic engineering is used in more than one sense. ... A street hierarchy is a system of urban design that completely separates through automobile traffic from developed areas. ... Entrance to a guard-gated community (Paradise Village Grand Marina Villas, Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico). ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities. ... The Arabs (Arabic: عرب ) are a large and heterogeneous ethnic group found throughout the Middle East and North Africa. ... For the terrain type see Moor Moors is used in this article to describe the medieval Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, whose culture is often called Moorish. For other meanings look at Moors (Meaning) or Blackamoors. ... A Muslim (Arabic: مسلم, Turkish:Müslüman, Persian:مسلمان, Bosnian: Musliman) is an adherent of Islam. ... For the musical group, see Cul de Sac (group). ...

See also

• City block
• United States - Land Ordinance of 1785