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I take slight issue with this quotation - > Though the idea of a street grid seems perfectly ordinary to city-dwellers today, it was unusual at the time. Most

I take slight issue with this quotation - > Though the idea of a street grid seems perfectly ordinary to city-dwellers today, it was unusual at the time. Most great cities in Mesopotamia, for example, had curving streets and a more organic-looking layout. Maybe a street grid seems ordinary if you live in a large city in the US, but most European cities don't have gridded streets (and I don't think it's the norm in many other places in the world either).

davidw 12y ago
> most European cities don't have gridded streets The Romans built towns on a grid too. You can see that in the very center of many Italian towns, like the one I live in: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.4083831,11.875002,18z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x477eda5841ab30cf:0xc18236edaa1a2e2c https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.4083831,1... No, it's not a perfect grid any more, but it's still visible - not bad for a couple of thousand years.
allendoerfer 12y ago
Except when some monarch built one for fun. Like Mannheim [0]. Can't get more gridded than that. [0]: https://encrypted.google.com/maps/place/Mannheim,+Deutschland/@49.4869063,8.4649963,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x4797cc24518e3f45:0xb1e4fe7aa406e687 https://encrypted.google.com/maps/place/Mannheim,+Deutschlan...
- twic 12y ago
  Meanwhile, in Karlsruhe: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Karlsruhe,+Germany/@49.014667,8.4076456,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x47970648a2e07809:0xb6fc55734cb7ee7f https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Karlsruhe,+Germany/@49.0...