building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

However, a grid configuration extended across the whole territory could, from the
American point of view, guarantee building‐town‐country integration. It was on the
basis of this premise that Wright’s idea of a project to perfectly integrate Broadacre
City into the logical system of the majority of American territory [Figure 48‐50].
To understand it, it is worth retracing some historical and political transitions which
determined the transformation of the colonial checkerboards of the towns into a
system, with which even wider territories could be planned.
The problem of governing the developing Western lands arose for the first time
following the Land Ordinance of 1784, written by Thomas Jefferson (at the time a
delegate from Virginia), which made provision for the creation of a series of states
in the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, North of the Ohio River and East of
the Mississippi River. It had in fact become necessary to determine the criterion by
which newly acquired lands should be subdivided and managed following the Treaty
of Paris (1783), which had officially ended the War of Independence.
In 1785, therefore, a new Land Ordinance 85 was issued which not only provided a
useful model for land colonisation [Figure 47], but also enabled the land to be sold,
thus ensuring an income for the treasury chest of Congress. The idea of selling the
land also centralized the power and gave importance to the central bodies of the
newly born Republic, which had thus found a way to finance themselves. In fact,
Congress was unable to raise taxes from the settlers, because this right belonged to
the individual states. The Land Ordinance involved the work of geographers and
explorers, which was to establish the basis for the current Public Land Survey
System of the United States.
This system soon collided head‐on with the rights of the American Indians, who
were forcibly moved several times from their lands, even though the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787 had recognized the right of Native Americans to occupy the
territories, and excluded any unilateral interference by the United States.
85 For the data on this page see WHITE, Albert C., A History of the Rectangular Survey System,
Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991 (first ed. 1983), p. 776; KNEPPER, George
W., The Official Ohio Lands Book, Columbus, Ohio Auditor of State, 2002, p. 86
47