When it comes to the way cities grow and flow, there are three types: Cities that grew with no plan whatsoever; cities that grew on a boring, slapdash grid; and cities that grew according to someone's dream.
An example of a city that grew without a plan of any kind would be Boston, whose downtown streets are basically old, paved cowpaths. A gridded plan for Boston didn't come until much later. My own city is another, and there is at least
one neighborhood here where the developer laid out the streets by setting a horse loose on the property and following where it went, with the thinking being that a horse would choose the paths of least resistance.
An example of a city that grew on a grid would be Chicago or Toronto, whose street grids were put in place to facilitate fast growth without fuss, bother, or frippery. Grids work just fine, and can -- and usually are -- altered and decorated at a later date, as New York did with Central Park and Chicago did with its lakefront, but grids are utilitarian. There's no
artistry to a grid, and in the case of Toronto and Chicago, there's not even as much coherence as you'd expect from a pure grid.
And an example of a city that grew on a plan would be Washington, with an elegant pattern of diagonals and radials, parks built right in from the beginning, and space for strategically grand monuments. Barcelona and Paris are other famous examples of great city planning in action, as are plenty of areas in all the cities I've already mentioned. That being said, this is the place to talk about really great city and neighborhood plans. Hopefully, we can even mention some of the more obscure ones.
Take, for example,
Kingsport, Tennessee. Note the coherence of downtown, and how the layout, like a fanlight window, is unique without being gimmicky. You have a broad Broad Street interrupted by traffic circles where public art is displayed, anchored at both ends by civic and cultural institutions. To the south is the old train station, a lovely building, and to the north are the grand churches on Church Circle. This is a good plan with room for growth and expectations of greatness, even if the city has turned its back on downtown.
Some of the other planned cities that I can think of off the top of my head are Columbia, SC; Raleigh, NC; Savannah, Augusta and Macon, GA; and Erie, PA. Sometimes these cities' plans grew with the city as they did for a time in Savannah, and other times a city, like Raleigh, quickly outgrew its plan and went sprawling hell for leather across the countryside leaving its old planned heart behind.
Let's talk about these plans!
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