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