Redesigning Gridded Cities focuses with extreme detail on four
paradigmatic gridded cities, Manhattan, Chicago, Barcelona, and Hangzhou
by analyzing these cities and proposing their own interventions that
implicate the grid in productive ways. They emphasize the value of open
forms for city design, and specifically insist that the grid has the
unique capacity to absorb and channel urban transformation flexibly and
productively. In both historical and projective, this series of books
explore the potential of the grid as a design tool to produce a
multitude of urban processes and forms.
Manhattan is the first case in the series, before Chicago, Barcelona and
Hangzhou, and was conducted in the 2011-2012 academic year. The
hypothesis of seeking to understand the city by examining the criteria
of hierarchy and regularity of its urban infrastructures and
transformations may help us to a different understanding of the
decisions leading to the construction of the present-day city.
Manhattan's development is based on the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, the
second centenary of which was marked by a research project. The
precision of layout, the judicious definition of avenues and streets,
and the geometry of the city blocks are still interesting and
thought-provoking. Many initiatives and projects have taken place on the
island, gradually configuring the forma urbis of the central area of New
York that can only be understood in terms of the forcefulness of the
seminal grid project proposed at that time.
