GRID PLAN CITY ARCHITECTURE

S. Vedat Karaarslan Archaeologist

A criterion of a country’s development is that the addresses in the cities are short. Some define that the cities have the street names consisting of numbers as the “emotionlessness” of these cities. For example,

A hotel address in a country is the following:

….. Hotels, 9940 Universal Blvd. Orlxxxx, FL 32819.

The address in another country can be the following:

…… Hotel, xxxx Avenue., yyyyy St. No: 64/5 (District name) 06135 (City name).

In the first one, the whole address is written with 37 letters while the second one might be written with 49 letters. If we are to write a house’s address it can be more.

The main reason for this situation is the cities do not have a grid plan.

In antiquity, the grid plan architecture named Hippodamos in archaeology was started to be used wildly in Sardes in 5th century B.C after the Persians destroyed Milet close to the Didim region in Aydin. They also brought Hippodamos the Architect to today’s Susa placed in Iran and when he saw the grid plan in this city, he came back to Anatolia to use the grid plan. After that, Europe started to use grid plan in the cities. That is when the grid plan started to be used.

The best example for the grid plan city is the Milet Ancient City (Hippodamos) placed in today’s Turkey, in Didim region in Aydin. 

 

ARKEOTEKNO