CITIES AND TOWN The medieval city.pdf

CHAPTER 2
THE URBAN PLAN:
STREETS AND
STRUCTURES
[T]he most excellent proporcion therof: being devyded
in to xxxix quarters the most part square, with streats
very large and broad, all strayght as the same wear
layd with a line.
Report to the privy council on New Winchelsea 1
It was claimed in the last chapter that medieval towns each conformed
to one of two distinct plans, which in turn derived from the ways in
which the towns themselves had originated. One was the planned town,
the other the unplanned. This is, of course, a gross simplification of a
very complex reality. The best planned town became in the course of
time distorted in the absence of any effective regulatory authority. Contrariwise,
there was more design in the unplanned town than is sometimes
recognized. Nevertheless, this distinction has value and forms the
basis of this chapter.
THE PLANNED TOWN
The earliest human settlements were unplanned in the sense that the
layout of streets, houses, and public buildings was not controlled by a
local authority in accordance with an overall plan. Urban settlements
had grown by slow, unordered accretions from villages just as the latter
had grown from hamlets. But change was on its way. According to Aristotle
(384–322 b.c.e.), Hippodamus of Miletus introduced “the art of
planning cities” and applied it to the construction of Piraeus, the port