THE GRID: Earliest Common Ancestor

Part two of  THE GRID essay about establishing the origins of the American urban grid.

Earliest Common Ancestor

The first question posed by an investigation of history is always where to begin. Our immediate situation sits largely at odds with the previous century. There is evidence to suggest that the 20th Century is distinctly anomalous. It was defined by a dichotomous, almost paradoxical, relationship between conflict and expansion; our capacity to stand on the Moon and commit genocide were realised within the same epoch. This era is now history, its latter decades shift back towards a trajectory suggested by human history in general and our current society bears greater resemblance to the imperial laissez faire democracies of the late 18th and 19th Centuries, than the collectivist social democracies of the 20th(Di Battista 2015). The following discussion will establish the suburban genesis to examine the reasoning of the proposed masterplan. 

 

Although to contemporary eyes the gridiron is emblematic of an American city, the grid’s origins lie across the Atlantic. In 1767 Craig’s plan for the New Town of Edinburgh proposed the draping of a grid over the ridge adjacent to the existing settlement. The Old Town was a dense herringbone of buildings that connected two monumental edifices, the castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. By comparison the New Town was designed as an Arcadian vision of affluence and elegance, held within the rigorous matrix of gridded streets. It was created as a response to the concern that Edinburgh would haemorrhage its wealthy citizens to London (Ballon 2012). The grid here is a device to apply the Enlightenment dogma of hierarchy axis and unity onto a tabula rasa (Glandinning & MacKechnie 2004). 

Its use, in juxtaposition to the Old Town, not only espoused modernity but further entrenched the social division between the gentry and the mob. The grid here enforces plutocracy of the old order using the thinking of the new.

Craig's Plan for Colonial Edinburgh

Aerial Image of Colonial Lima

However, it would be naive to consider this divisive authoritarianism a new phenomenon. It is also here that the first strand of the American Grid emerges. During the Spaniards’ conquest of South and Central America in the 16th and 17th Centuries, they developed a systematic way of occupying newly conquered lands called the Law of the Indies. This planning code began as an informal, doubtless intuitive, framework that crystallised into an exhaustive blueprint governing every aspect of city planning. By choosing existing settlements the grid could be used to obliterate the defeated regime’s street patterns. The message to the local populace was clear. This land belongs to Spain now (Altman, Cline & Pescador 2003). The grid could further enhance the supremacy of the colonists because it predisposes rapid and efficient expansion, a necessity when establishing footholds in distant lands. The use of a gridiron provided the conquistadors with a pragmatic language that defined the colonial order and became a clear signifier of European dominance of an area. 

Typical Roman fort layout. The original pop-up.

Instantly recognisable amongst the fragments of indigenous settlements, the colonial grid evokes the archetypal Roman outpost. A military fort defined by a grid could be deployed and defended anywhere the legions went and became instantly recognisable as a clear symbol of Imperial occupation in that region (Ballon 2012). 

It is critical to remember these precedents as the discussion about the American grid unfolds. Its genealogy is one of division and imperialism. The grid historically is an oppressor.