Cities With Grid Layout: Ubiquitousness and Flexibility of an Urban Model

Might it be meaningful to think that an urban model such as the orthogonal grid layout, which has been a feature of cities for millennia, could still constitute a valid and practicable model today in the planning of contemporary cities? The authors believe that this reflection on the grid model might respond positively to earlier propositions, and these notes aim to supply a synthetic contribution to the book in that direction. In detail, in the first part of the chapter, an attempt is made to overcome a critical judgement as widespread as it is superficial that is traditionally applied to grid plan cities. The reflection is as follows: relationships between the physical form of the urban grid model and its evolutionary processes, its capacity of adhering to places and flexibility, its experimentations for a theory of special equality. In the second part of the chapter, setting out from the performance features of the model, the real conditions of the topicality of the grid plan are observed in contemporary experimentations of city planning.