Why do so many U.S. cities have gridded streets?

many cities in the United States have something in common the oldest parts of the city usually downtown have gridded streets why are so many cities in the United States originally designed with a gridded Street pattern there are plenty of good reasons but let's look at a few really critical ones the first one is just human nature early US cities adopted the grid because it was the cool thing to do at the time cities weren't designed in a vacuum city founders looked for their latest and greatest ideas for how to lay out a new city at that time it was the wide straight streets of Versailles or the plan for London after the great fire in 1666 perhaps the most influential plan the one that captured the imagination of a new nation was William Penn's plan for the city of Philadelphia it wasn't the first colonial city to use a simple grid pattern but as the colonial capital in larger city it was influential and spreading the idea of a rational grid pattern if the grid is good enough for the most powerful city and a newly founded America it must be good enough for all cities right of course there are more practical reasons to design a city with a grid pattern grids are great if you expect your city to grow really fast for example in its earliest days New York streets were laid out without any kind of discernible pattern and ended at Wall Street named after the literal wall that separated the city from the wilds of Manhattan in 1811 a group of civic leaders predicted that New York would continue to grow northward at a rapid pace they drafted a street pattern that imposed a repetitive grid over the rest of the island critics of the plan doubted that New York would ever grow into such an audacious grid but less than 100 years later it was a city of over 3 million people that kind of rapid growth may not have been possible without a clear rational grid New York was not the first to realize that using a simple repeatable grid would facilitate fast easy subdivision and growth in fact at this point it was happening at a national scale in the 1780s President Thomas Jefferson signed two national land ordinances that imposed a simple one-mile grid over much of the Midwest a further act in 1862 continued that grid through the American West just like in New York dividing the country into one mile grids and six mile townships allowed for orderly settlement of the continent selling grid squares also served as a great fundraiser for a fledgling nation short on cash this nationwide grid brings us to the next reason city in the u.s. used a grid pattern with all of these new grid lines Criss crossing the country it just made sense to use them when plotting out a new city a great example here Chicago a Chicago grew from the shores of Lake Michigan it incorporated those square mile lines into its street network its major streets will be laid out at one mile intervals this map for the mid 1860s shows using dotted lines that the future road to follow those grid lines you can see this today if you fly in Chicago Chicago's neighborhoods conform to this grid pattern laid out during the Jefferson administration in the 1780s the streets on the edge of Detroit are laid out in the same way not only did they accept the lines from the National Survey they didn't even bother with clever names you got six mile road 7 Mile Road and 8 mile yep that's where Eminem got the name of his movie now as we move further west the founding of new cities is tied to the construction of railroads the railroad companies received vast land grants from the federal government to lay their tracks to serve those trains railroad barons established hundreds of new cities along the routes railroad companies in the interest of growing these cities fast and making a lot of money use gritted Street patterns in the new cities they often use the exact same plans for cities along the same route to recap u.s. cities were founded with grid patterns because of influential examples of gridded cities because grids make it easy for cities to grow fast because cities use the same lines as those done by the national land audiences and because grids are really easy to plop down on building cities along a railroad all of them with the exception of the influential examples really comes down to money gridded streets create lots that are rectangles or squares making them easy to survey subdivide and sell of course these days cities are growing as fast as ever with Street patterns full of loops and cul-de-sacs but that's a video for another day

Channel: City Beautiful

Views: 416,756

Rating: 4.8905053 out of 5

Keywords: city, streets, grid, city planning, urban planning, planning, urban design, education, chicago, railroad, philadelphia, reno, street pattern, street network, portland, new york street grid, washington street grid, new york streets, washington dc, washington, new york, boston, gridded streets, cities, gridded streets vs, type of gridded street, us gridded streets, why do us cities have grided streets, street grid, in defense of gridded streets, jefferson grid, chicago street grid

Id: KUDVP6aRS1Y

Length: 3min 58sec (238 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2016