Chitkara school of planning and Architecture

Assignment-2
Town-planning-I
Meenakshi Goyal

Greek civilisation

Question1. Define grid-iron pattern and the reason behind its success as an efficient and organised town-planning process. Answer:
The grid plan, grid street plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. In the context of the culture of Ancient Greece, the grid plan is called Hippodamian plan.

The origin:(Greek)
Aristotle wrote of Hippodamus of Miletus (500 BCE) a political theorist who considered particularly the issue of towns and their organization. Hippodamus argued against the haphazard layout of Greek cities up to that time, and devised a gridiron plan for an ideal city, where the land was carefully divided into sacred, public and private spaces. In the 1st century BCE Vitruvius (architectsurveyor to the Emperor Augustus) dealt, in the first section of his treatise De Architectura, with the site of the city, the construction of city walls, the direction of the streets; he also commented on the importance of winddirection and the choice of sites for public buildings.

Reason behind its success. Financial success.

The infrastructure cost for regular grid patterns is generally higher than for patterns.

Traditional orthogonal grid patterns generally have greater street frequencies than discontinuous patterns. For example, Portland's block is 200 feet X 200 feet while Miletus' is half that size and Timgad's half again (see diagram). Houston, Sacramento and Barcelona are progressively bigger reaching up to four times the area of Portland's block. New York's 1811 plan (see above) has blocks of 200 ft. in width and variable lengths ranging from about 500 to 900 feet. The corresponding frequency of streets for each of these block sizes affects the street length

Ecological features, rain water absorption and pollutant generation

Typical, uniform grids are unresponsive to topography. Prienes plan, for example, is set on a hill side and most of its north-south streets are stepped, a feature that would have made them inaccessible to carts, chariots and loaded animals.

Improves walkability
Examining the issue of walkability, a recent comparison of seven neighbourhood layouts found a 43 and 32 percent increase in walking with respect to a grid plan and conventional suburban layout in a Fused Grid layout, which has greater permeability for pedestrians than for cars due to its inclusion of dedicated pedestrian paths.

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, 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 first planned Greek city was probably Miletus, which was rebuilt to a grid plan after 479 BC. Its gridded design has been credited to Hippodamus[1] (although this may be apocryphal), a Greek intellectual associated with the Pythagoreans. The pinnacle of Ionian grid planning however wasPriene, set on very uneven ground and encompassing an acropolis. The grid plan was a common tool of Roman city planning, based originally on its use in military camps known as castra. One of the most striking extant Roman grid patterns can be found in the ruins of Timgad, in modern-dayAlgeria. The Roman grid is characterized by a nearly perfectly orthogonal layout of streets, all crossing each other at right angles, and by the presence of two main streets, set at right angles from each other and called the cardo and the decumanus. This type of planning has been proved as the most efficient planning pattern.

Question: with the suitable sketches explain planning process of following cities Athens Corinth Miletus Priene

Corinth
Corinth is located in Southern Greece about50 miles from Greece. Corinth controlled the two major harbours and thus command the major trade routes between Asia and Rome. The Greek city state of Corinth was located on the Isthmus of Corinth. The site was first occupied in the fifth millennium BC. The early settlement grew into a town which according to Greek legend was named Ephyra, after the goddess of the same name who supposedly founded it. This town may have been destroyed by an earthquake around 2000 BC. The city that grew from the ashes was named Korinthos in the Pelasgian language of the pre-Hellenic peoples of Greece. A canal through the isthmus of Corinth was begun under the emperor Nero in 67 AD. Wielding a gold shovel, Nero himself was first to break ground, but the canal was not completed. Up to the 12th century, ships were dragged on rollers across the isthmus.

Miletus
The invention of formal city planning was attributed to Hippodamus (or Hippodamos) of Miletus ( ) (c. 498- c. 408 BC). Hippodamus helped to design the new harbor town of Piraeus, which served as a commercial port for Athensfurther inland. Hippodamus' name is frequently associated with other orthogonally planned towns, such as Olynthus, Priene, and Miletus. His direct involvement in these cases remains unproven, but his name remains permanently associated with this type of plan that we call Hippodamian. a. Rebuilt after the defeat of the Persians in 479BC, perhaps (although there is no specific evidence) with the assisance of Hippodamos. b. This was done with a rigidly orthogonal plan using a repeated pattern of identical units (city "blocks"). c. Ample space was provided for the city's commercial and religious buildings. d. The plan provided a limited number of wider arterial avenues (main streets). e. The city wall enclosed but was not organically related to the city. f. Miletus was thus "ahead of its time" and it was not until several decades later that these ideas received their full development -- most toward the end of the 5th century

The "principles" of Hippodamian planning. a. It is not certain what role Hippodamos actually played in this development: he may have been a "codifier," who took the ideas of others and wrote about them in a theoretical way, saying how cities should be laid out. b. The primary characteristic was the orthogonal plan ("gridiron" plan, with streets at right angles), adapted to function and topography (i.e., not mechanically applied). c, Regular housing blocks. d. Large areas set aside for public use: temples, theaters, offices, commercial centers. e. Wide arterial avenues. f. Walls that enclose the city, but are not necessarily related to the plan.

Priene

Located in the south of Ephesus, The city of Priene offers the marvellous features of a 4th century Greek city. Priene was designed by famous town planner, Hippodamos of Miletus.who designed the city in chess board plan with the strait streets cutting each other at the right angles. Major streets run in the east west direction while the secondary streets run in the north south direction. As a whole city faced to south. This arrangement made the Priene houses getting sun light during the winter mouths and sun went over the roofs of the houses during summer time. Hippodamos plan made the city divided into insulas or islands. Each rectangular area measuring ..........had either four houses or one official building. Some of the buildings such as stadium and theatre did not fit into city plan because of their shape and or their size. Besides its town planing, three monuments attract visitors to Priene: Priene theatre is one most beautiful examples of Greek type theatres. This horse shoe shaped theatre is built on hillside and had seating capacity of 5000 people. the theatre had renovations during the different periods of the history. Located nearly 100 meters above the Meander Valley and sea level, the Athena Temple draws attention of the visitors. This Ionic temple which was designed by architect Pytheos, also architect of Mausoleum in Halicarnasus, became one of the most famous monuments of Ionia. After his temple in Priene, Pyteos published a book explaining the principles of the Ionic architecture. The features he used this temple became canonical orders of Ionic architecture.

Athens

Athens grew from its focal point, the acropolis, which became the ceremonial centre of the city-state, decked with temples including the Parthenon. These temples, and other civic buildings of the ancient Greek world, defined the architectural style known as classical. Below the acropolis was the agora or central market and community space for the citizens of Athens

Athens. The city with the most glorious history in the world, a city worshipped by gods and people, a magical city. The enchanting capital of Greece has always been a birthplace for civilization. It is the city where democracy was born and most of the wise men of ancient times. The most important civilization of ancient world flourished in Athens and relives through some of the world's most formidable edifices. Athens is constantly inhabited since Neolithic Age. The 5th century was the time of its ultimate bloom, when moral values and civilization surpassed city limits and became the mother land of western civilization. In the centuries that followed, many conquerors tried to take over Athens. . In 1834 Athens was chosen to be the capital of the newly established Greek State. The city that now hosts more than 4,5 million people, was constructed around the Acropolis walls.

Question: Discuss in brief the transformation in various Greek cities planning process over time. Support your statement with any 3 distinct Greek towns and their planning. Answer:
The beginnings of ideas and institutions are seldom well known or well recorded. They are necessarily insignificant and they win scant notice from contemporaries. Town-planning has fared like the rest. Early forms of it appear in Greece during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.; the origin of these forms is obscure. Greek town-planning began in the great age of Greece, the fifth century B.C. But that age had scant sympathy for such a movement, and its beginnings were crude and narrow. Before the middle of the century the use of the processional highway had established itself in Greece. Rather later, a real system of townplanning, based on streets that crossed at right angles, became known and practised. Nevertheless, the art of town-planning in Greece probably began in Athens. The architect to whom ancient writers ascribe the first step, Hippodamus of Miletus,born about or before 480 B.C.,seems to have worked in Athens and in connexion with Athenian cities, under the auspices of Pericles. The exact nature of his theories has not been recorded by any of the Greek writers who name him. Aristotle, however, states that he introduced the principle of straight wide streets, and that he, first of all architects, made provision for the proper grouping of dwelling-houses and also paid special heed to the combination of the different parts of a town in a harmonious whole, centred round the market-place. But there seems to be no evidence for the statement sometimes made, that he had any particular liking for either a circular or a semicircular, fan-shaped town-plan Aristotle tells us that he planned the Piraeus, the port of Athens, with broad straight streets. He does not add the precise relation of these streets to one another. If, however, the results of recent German inquiries and conjectures are correct, and if they show us his work and notas is unfortunately very possiblethe work of some later man, his design included streets running parallel or at right angles to one another and rectangular blocks of houses; the longer and presumably the more important streets ran parallel to the shore, while shorter streets ran at right angles to them down to the quays. Here is a rectangular scheme of streets, though the outline of the whole town is necessarily not rectangular

The Macedonian age brought with it, if not a new, at least a more systematic, method of town-planning. That was the age when Alexander and his Macedonian army conquered the East and his successors for several generations ruled over western Asia, when Macedonians and Greeks alike flocked into the newly-opened world and Graeco-Macedonian cities were planted in bewildering numbers throughout its length and breadth. Most of these cities sprang up full-grown; not seldom their first citizens were the discharged Macedonian soldiery of the armies of Alexander and his successors. Priene was a little town on the east coast of the Aegean. The high ridge of Mycale towered above it; Miletus faced it across an estuary; Samos stood out seawards to the west. In its first dim days it had been perched on a crag that juts out from the overhanging mountain; there its life began, we hardly know when, in the dawn of Greek history. But it had been worn down in the fifth century between the upper and the nether millstone of the rival powers of Samos and Miletus. Early in the Macedonian age it was refounded. The old Acropolis was given up. Instead, a broad sloping terrace, or more exactly a series of terraces, nearer the foot of the hill, was laid out with public buildingsAgora, Theatre, Stoa, Gymnasium, Temples, and so forthand with private houses. The whole covered an area of about 750 yds. in length and 500 yds. in width. Priene was, therefore, about half the size of Pompeii (p. 63). It had, as its excavators calculate, about 400 individual dwelling-houses and a population possibly to be reckoned at 4,000.

The skill of German archaeologists has revealed what town-planning meant in a small town rebuilt in the Alexandrine period. No other even approximately complete example has been as yet uncovered on any other site. But spade-work at the neighbouring and more famous city of Miletus has uncovered similar street-planning there. In one quarter, the only one yet fully excavated, the streets crossed at right angles and enclosed regular blocks of dwelling-houses measuring 32 x 60 yds. (according to the excavators) but sub-divided into blocks of about 32 yds. square (fig. 9). These blocks differ somewhat in shape from those of Priene, which are more nearly square; whether they differ in date is more doubtful. They are certainly not earlier than the Macedonian era, and one German archaeologist places the building or rebuilding of this quarter of Miletus after that of Priene and in a 'late Hellenistic' and apparently Roman period. There is unquestionably much Roman work in Miletus; there seems, however, no sufficient reason for ascribing the houseblocks shown on fig. 7 to any date but some part of the Macedonian period. Though differently shaped, they do not differ very greatly in actual area from those of Priene. They are somewhat smaller, but only by about 60 sq. yds. in each average-sized plot.