![]() ![]() Of the six, only Barcelona adopted the Hippodamian grid in 1859 for its vast expansion, and Venice, without a classic grid, is the preeminent pedestrian haven, yet neither city matches the urbanist's praise for Portland. Urbanists and romanticists have expressed equally strong sentiments about Paris, London, Barcelona, Curitiba, Amsterdam and Venice. But strong feelings such as these may be entangled between actual attributes and personal associations, hard to unravel for practical purposes, as other cities also share such emotional investment, at times. Recently, a local movement to rename the city in order to project these strong emotions was set in motion. ![]() Constantly on the outlook for an ideal urban pattern, planners list Portland as a favorite and some boast "I love that city!" with emotion. Personal testimonies of visiting planners who express adulation for Portland add a second indirect layer of attention. Inevitably, attributes of the city - such as its grid - are seen by affiliation as paradigmatic. Indirectly, because the City of Portland has taken many first-ever, brave and decisive measures to manage growth, and cities and planners hold it up as a model of civic vision. Portland's street grid pattern has attracted attention indirectly and directly. In articles, project brochures and city planning reports "the grid" stands alone the other contestant, mid-to-late 1900s suburban networks, has been wholly discredited in mainstream planning. In this praise, it is not simply the grid in general, but the small blocks in particular that impart success. We read again that "Portland owes much of its success to its tiny blocks that create an incredibly porous network of streets, each of which can be quite small as a result" ( Jeff Speck, 2005). Portland's network offers an instructive example for discussing grids because of the grid's nature (an unadulterated Hippodamian grid and the densest of all American city grids (Fig 2, MS Earth), its size and the City's planning celebrity status. The grid gets credit for city success, at least by inference, but is this credit warranted? After all, the vast majority of our successful towns and cities, from Cambridge to Portland, were laid out this way." (Duany). The centre lines of streets intersect at 260 foot intervals.įor example, in 1992 we read that "Streets ought to be laid out largely in straight segments, as they were until the 1940s. Portland's (Hippodamian) Grid overlaid on a Virtual Earth bird's eye view of Pearl District. ![]() The "grid" as a network concept has been widely accepted and is now regarded as a superior geometry for laying out greenfield and infill sites.įigure 2. Clarity about its attributes may also open the way for its regeneration.Ĭurrent planning literature brims with references to "the grid" in juxtaposition with curvilinear and dendrite conventional suburban layouts. It deserves detailed attention if only to clarify this schism and enable site plan designers to know when and why they could apply 'the Grid'. This disparity between theory and practice simultaneously confuses the practitioner and frustrates the theoretician. This alleged lack of respect seems at odds with most planning literature, which extols its virtues and mirrors prevalent New Urbanist practice. From Miletus (473 BC) to Barcelona (1859) and to Portland (1867), the grid has resurfaced in many alternative sizes of square blocks and in variations of elongated rectangles (NY 1811). A session in the recent 2009 New Partners for Smart Growth conference focused on 'The Beautiful American Grid - the Embodiment of Smart Growth,' which lamented the fact that the grid 'gets no respect'.įigure 1. In the 4000-year history of the grid, American incarnations are relatively new, appearing first about 300 years ago, frequently as a simple, orthogonal and often square (such as Portland's) 'Hippodamian' grid, named after the planner of Miletus around 473 BC (Fig 1). But is Portland's grid worthy of adulation? Perhaps not, say Fanis Grammenos and Douglas Pollard of Urban Pattern Associates. For American planners, Portland, OR is held up as a shining example of urban planning, and credit is given to its compact grid. ![]()
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