10. The Squares of Savannah - "The Most Intelligent Grid"

The city of Savannah, Georgia, United States, was laid out in 1733 around four open squares. The plan anticipated growth of the city and thus expansion of the grid; additional squares were added during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and by 1851 there were twenty-four squares in the city.

Savannah's city plan has been called "the most intelligent grid in America, perhaps the world", and Edmund Bacon wrote that "it remains as one of the finest diagrams for city organization and growth in existence."

 The American Society of Civil Engineers has honored the plan for Savannah as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and in 1994 the plan was nominated for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Most of Savannah's squares are named in honor or in memory of a person, persons or historical event, and many contain monuments, markers, memorials, statues, plaques, and other tributes.

Savannah was founded by General James Oglethorpe. Although cherished by many today for their aesthetic beauty, the first squares were originally intended to provide colonists space for military exercises. A square was established for each ward of the new city. The first four themselves formed a larger square on the bluff overlooking the Savannah River. The original plan actually called for six squares, and as the city grew the grid of wards and squares was extended so that twenty-four squares were eventually created on a six-by-five grid. 

Image above: Layout of a typical ward in Oglethorpe's plan.

All of the squares measure approximately 200 feet from north to south, but they vary east to west from approximately 100 to 300 feet. Typically, each square is intersected north-south and east-west by wide, two-way streets. Traffic flows counterclockwise around the squares, which thus function much like traffic circles.

Each square sits at the center of a ward. The lots to the east and west of the squares, flanking the major east-west axis, were considered "trust lots" in the original city plan and intended for large public buildings such as churches, schools, or markets.

The remainder of the ward was divided into four areas, called tythings, each of which was further divided into ten residential lots. This arrangement is illustrated in the 1770 Plan of Savannah. The distinction between trust lot and residential lot has always been fluid. Some grand homes, such as the well-known Mercer House, stand on trust lots, while many of the residential lots have long hosted commercial properties.

All of the squares are a part of Savannah's historic district and fall within an area of less than one half square mile. The five squares along Bull Street—Monterey, Madison, Chippewa, Wright, and Johnson—were intended to be grand monument spaces and have been called Savannah's "Crown Jewels." Many of the other squares were designed more simply as commons or parks, although most serve as memorials as well.
The squares are a major point of interest for millions of tourists visiting Savannah each year, and they have been credited with stabilizing once-deteriorating neighborhoods and revitalizing Savannah's downtown commercial district.

Lessons from Savannah;
1. Use Savannah's "intelligent grid" to relieve the monotony of the common gridiron street pattern.
2. Landscaped Squares bring nature right into the heart of the development.

9. Montpazier - Beauty and the Beast

Monpazier, founded in 1284, is regarded as the model of all "bastide" or planned garrison villages because of its perfect layout, and the quality of its buildings. Perched on the summit of a gentle hill, Monpazier is an ideal base to explore the rich variety of attractions of the Périgord region of France. A rectilinear street pattern is a thing of beauty, but only in small doses. Extend the pattern too far and the beauty turns into a beast!

The beautiful Bastide village of Montpazier in France.

Monpazier's Rectilinear Plan. Note the Central Market Square.

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.

Gridiron patterns were invented by logical minds intent on control. Miletus was the first planned Greek city, built to a grid plan after 479 BC. Its gridiron design has been credited to Hippodamus a Greek intellectual associated with the Pythagoreans.

The town of Priene, set on uneven ground is a good example of Ionian grid planning.

The grid plan was a common tool of Roman city planning, based originally on its use in military camps known as castra. 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.

Bastides are towns planned and built as a single unit, by a single founder. The majority of bastides have a grid layout of intersecting streets, with wide thoroughfares that divide the town plan into blocks, through which a narrow lane often runs.

There is a central market square surrounded by arcades through which the axes of thoroughfares pass, with a covered measuring area.

The Market Building above and below.

The market square often provides the module into which the bastide is subdivided. The Roman model, the castrum with its grid plan and central forum, was inescapable in a region where Roman planning precedents remained in medieval cities like Béziers, Narbonne, Toulouse, Orange and Arles.

The Bastide towns in France prove that gridiron streets can be beautiful if limited in area. If the gridiron pattern is repeated too extensively, the beauty turns into a beast of monotony!

Image above: Street scene with cars. The area near center of Monpazier is varied and interesting whereas further out is dull and boring just as so many other gridiron street patterrned villages everywhere.


The Lessons from Monpazier:
1. A rectilinear street pattern is great if limited in extent.
2. Provide a marketplace in the piazza or village square for the sale of fresh produce.
3. Surround your piazza with arcaded walkways.

Images: 1)Marco E Fiorenza 2)PhillipC 3)farm2.static 4)Ling_priene 5)PittsburgSteve 6)tourisme-aquitane 7)kedeld 8-11)PhillipC 12)aeefe

7. People Love an Easy Walk

In villages of the old world, people walked everywhere, to work, to market or store, to school, to church, and to eat with their friends. They had contact with others along the way. Easy physical contact with other people kept them from feeling isolated. Historically, people not only knew their neighbors but everyone else in town, the simple result of walking their village.

Image above shows children walking home from school in an urban setting.
What happened to the fun or drama of chance meetings along the way? What happened sudden rainstorms, the wind in your hair or the pebble in your shoe?
These issues are truly important to consider and re-introduce to the built environment.

Image above: Sentimental yes, but learning to find their way in life!

Cycle Paths
When the school or library is just too far to walk to, bicycles are great and take up very little space.
It is so much cheaper and easier to provide for cycle paths than for cars. Get a copy of "Cycle-Friendly Infrastructure: Guidelines for Planning and Design".

Note how narrow an effective a cycle path needs to be.

But, people love cars too!
Yes, cars are fun to drive. Some are beautiful to look at. Men of the world have fallen in love with seductively curvaceous sheet metal that their wives will let them keep as an allowable mistress. This is a personal favorite, the Alfa Romeo Spider. Yes!

The exhilaration of speed is an added bonus. But tell me where can I still find a winding country road that is still fun to drive without the fear of being flagged down by a state trooper? Perhaps in the countryside just outside the village?
Cars represent personal mobility. One can get from one place to another choosing ones exact destination, the range and speed. One can carry items too large to carry by hand. Automobiles also represent personal expression. This is a key element of how drivers choose their vehicles. In a world where home ownership is out of reach for many people, the automobile becomes the biggest investment one will personally make. The desire to have the car reflecting one's personality through color, design or brand, is a near-inevitable result: the sense of personal freedom and independence. Even though there is increasing pressure on auto makers to provide smaller electric or hybrid vehicles, the need to buy and use cars is not likely to disappear.
Before we look at how cars should be accommodated in new projects, let us next examine just how bad planning has let automobiles destroy village life.

Conclusions:
1.Provide your development with a pedestrian core where even small children are safe to walk.
2. Provide cycle tracks to more distant locations.

Images: 1)emergentstructures 2)thedailygreen 3)everydaycycling.com 4)cars4fast

1. Introduction

How do we improve the quality of our lives? This blog is about identifying what people love about the built environment, regardless of architectural style. By tracing how communities were structured over eons of time and with good reason,, I aim to show how to restore these time proven patterns to our new building projects.

Image: Pienza in Italy. The very first fully planned Renaissance village.
Although the examples used come mostly from the USA and Europe, the patterns are observable in the villages of many cultures, from the orient to the occident. In addition, the important  issue of “green” technology is addressed and supported. I suggest we use these patterns because people matter.
Very soon, dwindling traditional resources and rising gas prices will force people everywhere to think “outside the box”. By applying the principles outlined here, you will be ahead of the pack.
Giving people what they like, love and makes sense will translate into all round profitability and benefit society at the same time. It is a win-win situation for all concerned in the development process, investors, developers, buyers and tenants.

Images: 1)Luana58
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