Savannah's mysterious historic plan
I mentioned Savannah's unique grid plan in a previous post, but this video explains the odd history of this city plan a little better. James Oglethorpe's plan was a mixture of a number of different city plans available at the time and he is a big reason why modern day Savannah is such a pleasant place to walk and explore.
Why do so many U.S. cities have gridded streets?
The video above is pretty great. I've always known about NYC's grid plan based off of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, but I didn't know the actual grid type is unique to several cities in the US. NYC's grid plan is based off of long rectangular blocks whereas cities like Savannah are based off of block units that are subdivided into smaller blocks. Barcelona is another city with a unique grid system based on supercells.
It all reminded me of the book The Greatest Grid which explains how NYC's own grid system was created. If you're curious, The Museum of the City of New York has a section dedicated to the grid. And of course, the NYPL is a wealth of information on this topic.