Cities of the Pre-Industrial Revolution
Let’s take a look at how they found their place in the design of a sampling of important cities, from antiquity to the 19th century.
In the 19th century, when industrialization came to cities, everything changed. But before that there was a long continuity of ideas about how to design cities. It’s totally foolish to imagine that we could explore several thousand years of history of cities in just one story.
However, what we can do is to talk about the leading ideas, the things that dominated the design of settlements for that long period of time and help you recognize them in your communities.
Many of you who live in cities that date back hunderts of years, and the traces of earlier settlements can be seen by just by walking around in your city. But those of you who live in more recent cities, will also probably be surprised to see the number of ideas of contemporary cities that have their roots in what had happened in earlier cities.
Human’s may have been designing and planning settlements since the dawn of civilization. Many of the earliest settlements were created in informal ways. People simply gathered around the camp fire, built houses around it and the settlements emerged from that kind of informal process.
But beginning at least 3000 years ago, people began deliberately designing settlements. As civilizations grew and became more stable and amassed resources, conscious ideas entered into the design of places.
The first idea is the wall. Defense became essential, and for over 2000 years, the design of fortifications became a critical part of planning cities. Even after fortifications came down, and the moat was drained, the idea of creating limits to the city remained.
The second idea is the grid. As land ownership was dispersed to families and people there was a need to subdivide property in some logical way and record it on maps.
There was a need also to define public areas like streets and squares. A grid plan was the easiest way to map on the ground and the easiest to subdivide. Gridiron cities were created by the Greeks as they settled Asia Minor 500 years BC. And, grids were the favorite form of new cities when the Europeans conquered the Americas in the 15th century. As this map of Lima, Peru shows. The third idea is the axis.
Some parts of the city have been more important than others throughout history. And some people have been more important than others. Even in a gridiron city like Bejing, the importance of the Emperor was reinforced by creating a central axis and only he was permitted to walk along.
In Renaissance Rome, Pope Sixtus, the Fifth, used the axes of a way of uniting the separate and districts of the city and the residue of the monuments that have been left behind, and by creating important plazas and buildings.
The fourth idea is the city square. In European cities, public squares were created to become the living room of the city. A place for all important events. Often they started as open market places. And as markets moved indoors, they became spaces used for multiple purposes. The Piazza Ducale, in Vigevano and Italy is typical of such central spaces. But in England, in parts of Northern Europe, city squares could also be green spaces, offering relief from the dense city. This idea was carried over into the new world, in the design of new cities.
The final idea I’ll discuss here is the cloister. Places for worship in the homes of religious deities had a special role in the pre-industrial city. Spaces were created for monasteries, houses of worship, temples and other kinds of shrines and these were often given prominent locations in the city.
Bangkok’s many wats were the landmarks that defined the character of that city, and do to this day. Church’s often defined the skylines of American cities and marked the center of neighborhoods and districts of the city. The sacred spaces were often accompanied by schools, and meeting houses, and residents for all those who they served.
All five of these elements can be found in cities with long histories.
So, let’s take a look at how they found their place in the design of a sampling of important cities, from antiquity to the 19th century.
In the year 1800, the largest and probably the most important was Chang-An (eternal peace), in central China, located along the Silk Road. It had over a million people. It was the seat of the Tang Dynasty and had legations from all the important countries of the world.
It also housed the political and economic structure of China. Today, Chang-An is known as Xian. The design of Chang-An actually began much earlier, with some of the walls and many of the temples built in 100 BC.
When the Tang Dynasty made it its capital, it became the prototype for all Chinese cities, including the prototype for Beijing. The original wall of Chang-An was five kilometers by six kilometer, and the city had 11 gates.
A central axis, led to the administrator, city and ultimately to the Imperial Palace. The city had a grid plan, with each very large block subdivided into larger or smaller lots, depending on the stature of the occupant.
There were two markets near the gates of the city. And hundreds, literally hundreds of Taoist, Buddhist and other temples scattered throughout the city, almost one on every block. Modern day Xian occupies only about one-third of the original city of Chang-An, but it remains one of the few large walled cities in the world with gates in their original locations.
The grand axis of the city remains with the drum tower occupying a key location along it. The large main streets remain but the life of the city exists on the streets and alleyways between them, much as it did more than a thousand years ago. The diversity of blocks within the grid is maintained, including the Muslim quarter, which is quite unique for cities in China. Today’s Beijing shows the unmistakable elements of Chang-An.
Now let’s jump to the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe. Most European cities invested heavily in building fortifications to defend their population, secure those who fled the land around the city in the face of invading armies.
An example, is Klagenfelt, Austria, notable for its orderly planning of the streets and squares in the town. Roads connect the gates of the town for quick mobilization of troops. But there was also a need to secure their territory. Throughout much of France and the remnants of the Roman Empire, noblemen such as Raymond the 7th of Toulouse built new towns on the perimeter of the lands they controlled. These towns called bastides were also designed as a grid plan.
Montpazier is one of the best preserved and we can see today just how it functioned. The market square is located at the precise center, surrounded by the administrative buildings and shops. The church occupies an adjacent block with its cloistered green. While much of the wall has been abandoned, some of the gates remain, and the town is still largely occupied.
A real revolution in city design began in Rome in the 16th century. After the fall of the Empire, Rome fell into ruins, and was almost deserted. But with the relocation of the papacy back to Rome and the ambition of the popes who lodged there and we should say, the money collected from the Christian realm all over Europe, were almost ready for a transformation.
Pope Sixtus, The Fifth provided the impetus. Although he reigned for only five years, Sixtus the Fifth laid down a new street plan for the city connecting major monuments. It involved axis and view corridors which connected the city visually.
New piazzas were added, including the Piazza del Papolo, with its twin churches and vistas to the distance. Sixtus’ axis set the stage for the creation of the 17th century, St. Peters Square, one of the greatest achievements in city design in history and the icon of Baroque city planning.
Sometimes disaster provides the opportunity for changes in city design.
In 1666, much of central London burned to the ground. And architects and designers of the day were quick to rush in with their proposals as to how it should be rebuilt.
Unfortunately, it was rebuilt pretty much the way it was before. But the schemes by Christopher Wren and John Evelyn had far-reaching influence on the design of new settlements in the New World.
Less than 15 years later, William Penn, a Quaker, was given a large land grant by the King, on the Delaware River shores of its American Colony. It was probably as much to get rid of Penn and his colleagues, who were constantly needling the king. He called upon a surveyor to lay out a new settlement. Thomas Holme clearly had in mind the unsuccessful schemes for London. Thomas Holme proposed a settlement with a gridiron plan running from the Delaware river to the Schuykill river about two miles away. There would be two major streets, roughly in the cardinal directions, and five squares.
One in each quadrant, and one in the center called city square. The blocks and lots would be large enough so that every one living there could have a small orchid or keep animals on their property. William Penn saw it as creating a Greene Country Towne.
Philadelphia was slow to develop. 20 years after its founding, only a few blocks have been occupied, and it took fully two centuries to fill out the plan from river to river.
But they stuck with the plan. Public buildings were added as they were needed, and streets became lively places for residents to meet. And housing which began as townhouses with large green spaces behind, evolved, became more dense, taller and while the blocks remain the same.
It was not until the turn of the 20th century that city square was built upon, when a new City Hall and Courthouse was constructed. In its time, they were the largest public buildings in America. Philadelphia’s Four Squares remain the outdoor center of its four center city neighborhoods and they’re loved by all.
At Savannah, Georgia, Charles Oglethorpe created a plan in 1733 for a city where virtually every house faced a Square. Savannah remains today one of the most liveable cities in the country. In Australia, Colonel William Light laid out a city quite similar to Philadelphia in 1823, and he surrounded it with a green belt.
When it came time to expand, rather than consume the green belt, North Adelaide was added as another free-standing city. Adelaide remains one of the most livable cities in Australia.
The combination of all of these ideas in pre-industrial cities was the design for Washington, the national capital that replaced Philadelphia.
Laid by Charles L’Enfant, it had a gridiron plan. A monumental axes that emphasized the importance of public buildings and monuments. Public squares and monuments were for both the federal city and the everyday city, and blocks that varied depending upon whether they were commercial areas or residential blocks. Washington would later become recast as the greatest example of the city beautiful movement in America. But that’s a story for medium and I will say no more about Washington.
What we see through this brief excursion through the history of the ideas about city design, is that many ideas we take for granted today, actually has their origins in pre-industrial cities dating back to antiquity. The early plans for cities provide the armature for future design. They can of course be modified, as Rome was by Sixtus the 5th, or Paris was through Baron Von Houseman’s efforts. Or many other American cities were changes through urban renewal and redevelopment in the 1970s and 1980s.
But the form of a city is in its DNA, inherited from previous generations. It’s important to understand where those ideas came from.
