Grid Plan - Ancient Grid Plans

Ancient Grid Plans

The grid plan dates from antiquity and originated in multiple cultures; some of the earliest planned cities were built using grid plans.

By 2600 BC, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, major cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (present day Pakistan), were built with blocks divided by a grid of straight streets, running north-south and east-west. Each block was subdivided by small lanes. The cities and monasteries (e.g. Julian, Takht Bahi etc.) of the "Taxila Civilization" or "Ghandhara Civilization" (in modern day Pakistan) dating back to 1st millennium BC to the 11th century AD, also had grid-based designs. Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan since 1959, was also founded on the grid-plan of the near-by Taxila ruined city of "Sirkhap".

A workers' village at Giza, Egypt (2570-2500 BC) housed a rotating labor force and was laid out in blocks of long galleries separated by streets in a formal grid. Many pyramid-cult cities used a common orientation: a north-south axis from the royal palace and an east-west axis from the temple meeting at a central plaza where King and God merged and crossed.

Hammurabi (17th century BC) was a king of the Babylonian Empire who made Babylon one of the greatest metropolises in antiquity. He rebuilt Babylon, building and restoring temples, city walls, public buildings, and building canals for irrigation. The streets of Babylon were wide and straight, intersected approximately at right angles, and were paved with bricks and bitumen.

The tradition of grid plans is continuous in China from the 15th century BC onward in the traditional urban planning of various ancient Chinese states. Guidelines put into written form in the Kaogongji during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) stated: "a capital city should be square on plan. Three gates on each side of the perimeter lead into the nine main streets that crisscross the city and define its grid-pattern. And for its layout the city should have the Royal Court situated in the south, the Marketplace in the north, the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the east and the Altar to the Gods of Land and Grain in the west."

Teotihuacan, near modern-day Mexico City, is the largest ancient grid-plan site in the Americas. The city's grid covered eight square miles.