Professional Documents
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Martin Leslie 1972 The Grid As Generator
Martin Leslie 1972 The Grid As Generator
†
Some parts of ‘The grid as generator’ were used in the Gropius Lecture at Harvard University in June 1966. The argu-
ment was developed later into the theme delivered at the University of Hull under the title, ‘The Framework of Planning’,
as the inaugural lecture by Leslie Martin as Visiting Ferens Professor of Fine Art. It is presented here in essentially that form.
‡
See also a review of both Sitte 1889 and Collins 1965 in L. March (1966).
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The grid as generator 71
living’. For her a city can never be the total work of art, planting of new towns throughout America, practi-
nor can there ever be the statistically organised city. cally all of them based on highly artificial gridiron
Indeed, to Mrs Jacobs, the planning of any kind of plans. He points out that there is a sense in which
order seems to be inconsistent with the organic not merely cities but the whole of Western America
development of cities which she sees as a direct out- is developed within an artificial frame: ‘the giant grid-
come of the activities of living. Planning is a restrictive iron imposed upon the natural landscape by … the
imposition: the areas of cities ‘in which people have land ordinance of 1785’.
lived are a natural growth … as natural as the beds of The coloniser knows that the natural wilderness
oysters’. Planning, she says, is essentially artificial. has to be transformed: areas must be reserved for
It is of course just this opposition between agriculture as well as plots for building. The man-
‘organic’ growth and the artificial nature of plans, made landscape is a single entity: cities and their
between living and the preconceived system within dependant agricultural areas are not separate ele-
which it might operate, that has been stressed so ments. All these things are matters of measure and
much in recent criticism. Christopher Alexander in a quantity. They are interrelated between themselves
distinguished essay ‘A city is not a tree’ puts the and numbers of people. The process demands a qual-
point directly when he says: ity of abstract thought: a geometry and a relationship
of numbers worked out in advance and irrespective of
I want to call those cities that have arisen spon-
site. The 20-mile square plan for the proposed colony
taneously over many many years ‘natural cities’.
of Azilia, the plans of Savannah and Georgetown, are
And I shall call those cities or parts of cities that
typical examples of this kind of thought. William
have been deliberately created by planners ‘arti-
Penn’s plan for Philadelphia, the plans of such towns
ficial cities’. Siena, Liverpool, Kyoto, Manhattan,
as Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, New York City
are examples of natural cities. Levittown,
itself, Chicago and San Francisco, are all built on the
Chandigarh and the British New Towns are
basis of a preconceived frame.
examples of artificial cities. It is more and more
In the case of the mediaeval towns described by
widely recognised today that there is some
Beresford, whilst some failed, a high proportion suc-
essential ingredient missing in the artificial cities
ceeded in their time. In a large number of American
(Alexander 1966).
cities, the artificial grid originally laid down remains
Let us consider this. First of all would it be true to the working frame within which vigorous modern
say that all old towns are a kind of spontaneous cities have developed. It is quite clear then that an
growth and that there have never been ‘artificial’ or artificial frame of some kind does not exclude the
consciously planned towns in history? Leaving on possibility of an organic development. The artificial
one side ancient history, what about the four hun- grid of streets that was laid down throughout
dred extremely well documented cases of new towns Manhattan in 1811 has not prevented the growth
(deliberately planted towns) that Professor Beresford of those overlapping patterns of human activity
has collected for the Middle Ages in England, Wales which caused Alexander to describe New York as an
and Gascony alone (Beresford 1967)? What about organic city. Life and living have filled it out but the
the mediaeval towns such as those built in Gascony grid is there.
between 1250 and 1318 on a systematic gridiron And this brings us closer to the centre of
plan? All these towns were highly artificial in Alexander’s main argument What he is criticising in
Alexander’s sense. The planted town, as Professor the extended content of his essay, is the notion that
Beresford observes, ‘is not a prisoner of an architec- the activities of living can be parcelled out into sep-
tural past: it has no past’. In it the best use of land arate entities and can be fixed for ever by a plan.
meant an orderly use, hence the grid plan. In siting The assumption is common in much post-war plan-
it and building it estimates had to be made about its ning. Consider an example. Housing is thought of
future, about its trade, its population, and the size in terms of density: 75, 100, 150 people per acre.
and number of its building plots. This contributes a That will occupy an area of land. Housing requires
highly artificial procedure. schools and they need open space: that will occupy
But it is of course by no means uncommon. Indeed another specific area. These areas in turn may be
it is the method by which towns have been created thought to justify another need: an area for recre-
in any rapidly developing or colonial situation. ation. That is one kind of thought about planning. But
A recent book by John Reps, The Making of Urban alternatively an effort may be made to see the needs
America (1965) is a massive compendium of the of a community as a whole. It may be discovered
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72 Urban Design Reader
that the way housing is arranged on the ground may urbanisation. That framework remains the control-
provide so much free space that the needs of schools ling factor of the way we build whether it is artificial,
or recreation will overlap and may even be contained regular and preconceived, or organic and distorted
within it (Martin 1968). by historical accident or accretion. And the way we
In the first instance the uses are regarded as self- build may either limit or open up new possibilities
contained entities: Alexander equates this kind of in the way in which we choose to live.
thinking with an organisation like that demonstrated The understanding of the way the scale and pat-
by a mathematical tree. In the second instance the tern of this framework, net or grid affects the pos-
patterns of use overlap: the organisation in this case sible building arrangements on the land within it, is
is much closer to a far more complex mathematical fundamental to any reconsideration of the structure
structure: the semi-lattice. The illustration of the sep- of existing towns. It is equally important in relation
arate consideration of housing, schools and open to any consideration of the developing metropoli-
space is elementary. But it is Alexander’s argument tan regions outside existing towns. The pattern of
that whole towns may be planned on this basis. the grid of roads in a town or region is a kind of
And it is this attempt to deal with highly complex playboard that sets out the rules of the game. The
and overlapping patterns of use, of contacts and of rules outline the kind of game; but the players
communications in a way which prevents this over- should have the opportunity to use to the full their
lap from happening that Alexander deplores. Hence individual skills whilst playing it.
the title of his paper: ‘A city is not a tree’. In this
sense of course he is correct. But the argument can
be put in a different way. It can be argued that the 2
notion (implied by Mrs Jacobs) that elaborate pat-
terns of living can never develop within a precon- How does the framework of a city work? In what
ceived and artificial framework is entirely false. This way does the grid act as a generator and controlling
can be developed by saying that an ‘organic’ growth, influence on city form? How can it tolerate growth
without the structuring element of some kind of and change?
framework, is chaos. And finally that it is only through The answer to these questions is best given by
the understanding of that structuring framework historical examples, and in order to give the argu-
that we can open up the range of choices and ment some point we can deliberately choose the
opportunities for future development. most artificial framework for a city that exists: the
The argument is this. Many towns of course grew grid as it has been used in the United States, and so
up organically by accretion. Others, and they are well illustrated by Reps (1965).
numerous and just as flourishing, were established We can start with the notion that to the coloniser
with a preconceived framework as a basis. Both are the uncultivated wilderness must be tamed into a
built up ultimately from a range of fairly simple for- single urban–rural relationship. In the plan for the
mal situations: the grid of streets, the plots which proposed Margravate of Azilia (the forerunner of
this pattern creates and the building arrangements the colony of Georgia) the ground to be controlled
that are placed on these. The whole pattern of is 20 miles square, or 256,000 acres. Implicit in the
social behaviour has been elaborated within a lim- subdivisions of this general square is a mile square
ited number of arrangements of this kind and this is grid; and out of the basic grid the areas for farmland,
true of the organic as well as the constructed town. the great parks for the propagation of cattle and the
Willmott and Young, studying kinship in the East individual estates are built up. At the centre is the
End of London (1957), were able to show that city proper.
everywhere elaborate patterns of living had been The Margravate was never built, but the concept
built up. All these elaborations, and a great variety of the single urban–rural unit and the principle of a
of needs, were met within a general building pat- grid controlled land subdivision within this remains.
tern of terraces and streets. Change that pattern and In the County map of Savannah, Georgia, made in
you may prevent these relationships from develop- 1735, a grid of (slightly less than) one mile square
ing or you may open up new choices that were not sub-divides a rectangle nearly 10 miles long and 6
available in the original building form. miles deep. Thirty-nine of these squares remain
The grid of streets and plots from which a city is wooded areas: within this primary subdivision, fur-
composed, is like a net placed or thrown upon the ther subdivisions create farms of 44 acres and 5-acre
ground. This might be called the framework of garden plots. These are the related grid systems of
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The grid as generator 73
the city region. On the river front within this main the rectangular building plots set out by this grid
system is the city itself. are generally 600 ft by 200 ft. There were some public
Now it is this city grid of Savannah that can be open spaces. (Central Park was of course carved out
used as a first example of a city grid. A view of later.) And it is this framework that has served the
Savannah in 1734 illustrated in John Reps’ book successive developments of the built form from 1811
describes the principle: the plots and streets of the to the present day.
embryo city are being laid out: some buildings are The third example of a city grid is of interest
complete. The unit of the Savannah grid is square: because of its dimensional links with the land ordi-
it is called a ward and is separated from its neigh- nance, suggested by Thomas Jefferson and passed
bours by wide streets. Within each square (or ward) by Congress in 1785. Under that ordinance a huge
building plots for houses are arranged along two network of survey lines was thrown across all the
sides, the centre itself is open, and on each side of land north and west of the Ohio river (Robinson
this open square are sites for shops and public 1916). The base lines and principal meridians of the
buildings. Savannah grew by the addition of these survey divided the landscape into squares 36 miles
ward units. In 1733 there were four units: in 1856 each side. These in turn were subdivided into 6-mile
no less than twenty-four. The city became a che- squares or townships and further divided into 36
quer board of square ward units, marked out by the sections each one mile square. The mile squares are
street pattern. But within this again, the plaid is fur- then subdivided by acreage: the quarter section
ther elaborated. The central open spaces of each 160 acres with further possible subdivisions of 80,
ward are connected in one direction by intermedi- 40, 20, 10 or 5 acres. The 5-acre sites lend them-
ate roads, in the other direction the central areas selves to further division into rectangular city blocks
become a continuous band of open spaces and (not unlike those of Manhattan) and subdivision
public buildings. Here is a unit grid with direction again into lots or building plots.
and orientation. In 1832, according to Reps (1965), Chicago was
The second example of a grid is absolutely neu- not much more than a few log cabins on a swamp.
tral. It lays down an extensive and uniform pattern The railway came in the mid-century and by the
of streets and plots. The whole process can be illus- seventies and eighties a mile square grid had been
trated in one single large scale example. In 1811 the extended over a considerable area of the prairie and
largest city grid ever to be created was imposed the city framework had developed within this
upon a landscape. The unlikely site for this enter- through a plaiting and weaving of the subdivisions
prise was an area of land between two geophysical that have been described.
provinces in which a succession of tilts, uplifts and Here then are three types of grid, that of Savannah,
erosions had brought through the younger strata the gridiron of Manhattan and that of Chicago.
two layers of crystalline rock. These appeared as Each one is rectangular. Each one has admitted
rocky outcrops under a thin layer of soil and vege- change in the form and style of its building. Each
tation. Into their depressions sands and gravels had one has admitted growth, by intensification of land
been deposited by glacial action to create swampy use or by extension. Savannah, as it grew, tended to
areas through which wandered brooks and creeks. produce a green and dispersed city of open squares
Some of these still wander into the basements of (Fig. 8.1). In Manhattan, the small scale subdivision
the older areas of what is now Manhattan. of the grid and the exceptional pressure to increase
In 1613 the original Dutch settlement was lim- floor space within this, forced buildings upwards.
ited to the tip of the island. In 1760 there was little Chicago spread, continually opening out the pat-
expansion beyond this and contemporary illustra- tern of its grid. In each case the influence of the
tions depict to the north a rolling landscape. Taylor’s original grid remains: each one offers different pos-
plan of 1796 shows the first modest growth of a city sibilities and choices of building and of living.
laid out on a gridiron pattern. Surveys in 1785 and In order to trace the influence of the grid, we can
1796 extending up the centre of Manhattan set out examine the building arrangement that developed
the basis for a grid, and in 1811 the special State within it in New York. We can identify at once what
Commissioners confirmed this in an 8 ft long plan might be called the streets and the system that is
which plotted the numbered street system of established by the grid. If we now use the language
Manhattan as far north as 155th Street. The plan of the urban geographers, we know that this defines
showed 12 north–south avenues each 100 ft wide the general plot pattern. The building arrangement
and 155 cross streets each 66 ft wide. The size of develops within this (Conzen 1962).
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74 Urban Design Reader
†
This movement which began with gardens, was less appropriately applied to city layout. In Olmstead’s words, ‘lines of
roads were not to press forwards’. Their curving forms suggest leisure and tranquility. Compare this with the almost con-
temporary (1859) statements by Cerda in his plan for Barcelona in which there is ‘a reciprocal arrangement between that
which is contained’ (building plot and arrangement) and ‘that which contains’ (grid and street system). ‘Urbanisation is
an appendix to universal movement: streets are for movement but they serve areas permanently reserved and isolated
from that movement which agitates life’ (the environmental area).
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76 Urban Design Reader
called organic: London, Liverpool or Manchester. and we know the measurements that relate to these.
They too have a network of streets and however If we disagree with the choice we can change the
much the grid is distorted, it is there. At a certain scale measurements. Lionel March (1967) took Howard’s
and under certain pressures the grid combined with open centred city pattern linked by railways and
floor space limits and daylight controls is just as showed that it could be reversed into a linear
likely to force tall building solutions. And it is just as pattern linked by roads and that such patterns
likely to congeal. It lends itself just as readily to could be tested against the land occupied by our
regenerative action. The theoretical understanding present stock of building and our future needs.
of the interaction between the grid and the built form Now that is theory. It contains a body of ideas
is therefore fundamental in considering either exist- which are set down in measurable terms. It is open
ing towns or the developing metropolitan regions. to rational argument. And as we challenge it success-
The process of understanding this theoretical fully we develop its power. The results are frequently
basis rests in measurement and relationships and it surprising and sometimes astonishingly simple.
goes back certainly to Ebenezer Howard. Lionel Ebenezer Howard’s direct successor in this field was
March has recently pointed out a number of inter- Raymond Unwin. The strength of his argument
esting things about Howard’s book Tomorrow: a always rests in a simple demonstration of a mathe-
peaceful path to real reform first published in 1898. It matical fact. In an essay ‘Nothing gained by over-
is a book about how people might live in towns and crowding’ (Unwin 1912), he presents two diagrams
how these might be distributed. But the important of development on ten acres of land. One is typical
thing is that there is no image of what a town might development of parallel rows of dwellings: the other
look like. We know the type of housing, the size of places dwellings round the perimeter. The second
plot, the sizes of avenues. We know that shopping, places fewer houses on the land but when all the
schools and places of work are all within walking variables are taken into account (including the sav-
distance of the residential areas. On the basis of these ings on road costs) total development costs can be
measurements we know the size of a town and the cut. From the point of view of theory, the important
size of Howard’s cluster of towns which he calls a aspect of this study is the recognition of related fac-
city Federation. We know the choice that is offered tors: the land available, the built form placed on this,
and the roads necessary to serve these. He demon-
strated this in a simple diagram.
Unwin began a lecture on tall building by a refer-
ence to a controversy that had profoundly moved
the theological world of its day, namely, how many
angels could stand on a needle point. His method of
confounding the urban theologians by whom he was
surrounded was to measure out the space required in
the streets and sidewalks by the people and cars gen-
erated by 5-, 10- and 20-storey buildings on an iden-
tical site. The interrelationship of measurable factors
is again clearly demonstrated. But one of Unwin’s
most forceful contributions to theory is his recogni-
tion of the fact that ‘the area of a circle is increased
not in the direct proportion to the distance to be
travelled from the centre to the circumference, but in
proportion to the square of that distance’. Unwin
used this geometrical principle to make a neat point
about commuting time: as the population increases
round the perimeter of a town, the commuting time
is not increased in direct proportion to this.
FIGURE 8.4 The importance of this geometrical principle is
Change in the scale of the grid. Le Corbusier’s profound. Unwin did not pursue its implications. He
proposals for dwellings with setbacks (from his
proposals for a city for 3 million people) are was too concerned to make his limited point about
superimposed on the Manhattan grid and open up low density. But suppose this proposition is subjected
new possibilities in the building form. to close examination. The principle is demonstrated
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The grid as generator 77
again in Fresnel’s diagram (Fig. 8.5) in which each theoretical attempt to understand land use by
successive annular ring diminishes in width but has buildings.
exactly the same area as its predecessor. The outer This central square (which can be called the
band in the square form of this diagram has exactly pavilion) and the outer annulus (which can be called
the same area as the central square. And this lies at the court) are two ways of placing building on the
the root of our understanding of an important prin- land. Let us now extend this. On any large site a
ciple in relation to the way in which buildings are development covering 50% of the site could be
placed on the land. plotted as forty-nine pavilions, as shown in Fig. 8.6,
Suppose now that the central square and the and exactly the same site cover can be plotted in
outer annulus of the Fresnel diagram are considered court form. A contrast in the ground space available
as two possible ways of placing the same amount of and the use that can be made of it is at once appar-
floor space on the same site area: at once it is clear ent. But this contrast can be extended further: the
that the two buildings so arranged would pose forty-nine pavilions can be plotted in a form which
totally different questions of access, of how the free is closer to that which they would assume as build-
space is distributed around them and what natural ings (that is low slab with a tower form over this).
lighting and view the rooms within them might This can now be compared with its antiform:
have. By this process a number of parameters have the same floor space planned as courts (Fig. 8.7). The
been defined which need to be considered in any comparison must be exact; the same site area, the
same volume of building, the same internal depth
of room. And when this is done we find that the
antiform places the same amount of floor space into
buildings which are exactly one third the total height
of those in pavilion form (Martin and March 1966).
This brings the argument directly back to the ques-
tion of the grid and its influence on the building
form. Let us think of New York. The grid is develop-
ing a certain form: the tall building. The land may
appear to be thoroughly used. Consider an area of
the city. Seen on plan there is an absolutely even
pattern of rectangular sites. Now assume that every
one of those sites is completely occupied by a build-
ing: and that all these buildings have the same
tower form and are twenty-one storeys in height.
That would undoubtedly look like a pretty full occu-
pation of the land. But if the size of the road net
were to be enlarged by omitting some of the cross
FIGURE 8.5 streets, a new building form is possible. Exactly the
FIGURE 8.6
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78 Urban Design Reader
same amount of floor space that was contained in Square: and there could be 28 Washington Squares
the towers can be arranged in another form. If this in this total area. Within squares of this size there
floor space is placed in buildings around the edges could be large trees, perhaps some housing, and
of our enlarged grid then the same quantity of floor other buildings such as schools.
space that was contained in the 21-storey towers Of course no one may want this alternative. But it
now needs only 7-storey buildings. And large open is important to know that the possibility exists, and
spaces are left at the centre. that, when high buildings and their skyline are being
Let us be more specific. If the area bounded by described, the talk is precisely about this and not
Park Avenue and Eighth Avenue, and between 42nd about the best way of putting built space on to
and 57th Street is used as a base and the whole area ground space. The alternative form of courts, taken in
were developed in the form of Seagram buildings this test, is not a universal panacea. It suggests an
36 storeys high, this would certainly open up some alternative which would at once raise far-reaching
ground space along the streets. If, however, the questions. For instance, the open space provided in
Seagram buildings were replaced by court forms the present block-by-block (or pavilion) form is simply
(Fig. 8.8) then this type of development while using a series of traffic corridors. In the court form, it could
the same built volume would produce buildings become traffic-free courts. In this situation the ques-
only 8 storeys high. But the courts thus provided tion which needs answering is: at what point do we
would be roughly equivalent in area to Washington cease to define a built area by streets and corridors? At
FIGURE 8.7
FIGURE 8.8
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The grid as generator 79
FIGURE 8.10a
Quantities of built and open space in the Foundling Area.
FIGURE 8.10b
Possible geometric layout of the same quantities of built space in perimeter form.
can be seen within a new unifying context. What sort road network: the grid. Within this, the existing
of advantages could a rearrangement of the built floor space can be assessed (Fig. 8.10): 34% of the
form now create? Professor Buchanan in his study site is occupied by housing: 25% by roads: 15% by
area outlined three possible solutions with progres- office and commercial use: 12% is open space. In
sive standards of improvement. The merit of this is addition there is an important shopping street, a
that it sets out a comparative basis of assessment. But major hospital and several schools and educational
even his partial solution leads to an extensive road buildings. With this information available it can be
and parking system at ground level. From the point considered at a theoretical level how this might be
of view of the pedestrian the position is made toler- disposed in a new building arrangement.
able by the use of a deck system to create a second First, the shopping street, Marchmont Street,
level. Above this again, some comparatively tall could be established as a north/south pedestrian
buildings are required to rehouse the built space that route associated with the Underground and some
is at present on the ground. This kind of image of the housing. If all the office space which is at present
architecture of cities has a considerable history in scattered throughout the area could be placed in a
modern architecture and has been much used as an single line of buildings around the perimeter of the
illustration of central area reconstruction. But, as area (where some of it already is), it need be no
Professor Buchanan himself asks, what building com- higher than eight storeys. All the housing at present
plications does it produce and what sort of an envi- in the area could be placed within another band of
ronment does it create? Is it in fact worth building? buildings sited inside this and no higher than five
Professor Buchanan’s range of choices could in storeys. Of course it could be arranged on the
fact be extended by applying some of the theoretical ground to include other forms and types of hous-
work which has been described. And when this is ing. But in theory, the bulk of the building at pres-
done the results are significantly different. The ent covering the area could be placed in two single
boundaries of the total area that are being consid- bands of building running around its edge, leaving
ered have been defined by this new scale of the the centre open, which would be a park-like area
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The grid as generator 81
FIGURE 8.11a
The existing plot layout and building development in FIGURE 8.11b
an area of London that might be regarded as an The same area as that in 8.11a. The road network
environmental room. But it is subdivided by roads is now enlarged and runs around the boundary of
and the limited size of the building plot increasingly the area. Theoretically an entirely new disposition
forces development upward. of buildings is possible and the illustration shows
exactly the same amount of floor space in a new
form. Tall buildings are no longer necessary: the
buildings themselves have a new freedom for
about the same size as St James’s Park (Fig. 8.11). development and a considerable area of open space
is discovered.
Precisely the same amount of floor space would
have been accommodated. There need be no tall
buildings, unless they are specifically wanted. All
the housing could look onto a park. Buildings such A total area once unified by use will be increasingly
as schools could stand freely within this. There subdivided by traffic. We can leave things as they
would be a free site and a park-like setting for new are and call development organic growth, or we
hospital buildings. can accept a new theoretical framework as an out-
All that may sound theoretical and abstract. But line of the general rules of the game and work
to know what is theoretically possible is to allow towards this. We shall know that the land we need
wider scope for decisions and objectives. We can is there if we use it effectively. We can modify the
choose. We can accept the grid of streets as it is. In theoretical frame to respect historic areas and elab-
that case we can never avoid the constant pressure orate it as we build. And we shall also know that the
on the land. Housing will be increasingly in tall flats. overlapping needs of living in an area have been
Hospitals will have no adequate space for expan- seen as a whole and that there will be new possibil-
sion. Historic areas will be eaten into by new building. ities and choices for the future.
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