Learning From the Past 

Early Civilizations exhibited sustainable development characteristics by using easily available materials, existing geographic formations, and natural energy sources. What can we learn from them?

The Anasazi Indians on Mesa Verde

were able to both shade their settlements from intense summer sun and absorb sun during the winter. Additionally, the mesa itself protected the village from winter winds.

The Settlers of the Midwest 

also produced a dwelling well-adapted to the climate. Built of a common natural material, the Midwest sod house faced south to absorb winter sun while protecting the structure from northern, cold winter winds.

The Greek City

Early Greeks are well known for their city planning, their principal cities were not planned, but evolved. They were impossibly noisy and hard to navigate. Although the citizens recognized the problems, ancient civilizations never attempted to rebuild an established city unless it had been completely destroyed by war or other natural disasters. They would build, instead, in a new place and when they did, planning principles which are common today were put in place. 

Philadelphia, PA

William Penn commissioned the surveyor Thomas Holme to lay out the city in 1682. A rigid gridiron plan was adopted. Two major streets crossed in the center of the town and formed a public square. A square block park was placed in each of the four quadrants of the city. The early dwellings were single-family houses. In the middle of the eighteenth century it became a common practice to build dwellings on the side lot lines resulting in continuous rows of buildings which cut off access to the rear yards. Alleys were then cut through the center of the blocks. These alleys have since become the quaint and narrow business and residential streets for which the city is known today.

Savannah, GA

Laid out in 1733 by James Oglethorpe, Savannah was a regular grid pattern of rectangular streets with park squares liberally spotted in alternate blocks. Each park is different in foliage and focus:  sometimes a gazebo, sometimes a fountain or monument. Savannah is similar to Philadelphia with a more generous allocation of open spaces. The streets linked these parks and created a continuity of open space when the town was built only with single houses.

Washington, D.C.

In 1649 the first American City to adopt diagonal avenues and circles as the basic layout was Annapolis, Maryland, a small settlement on the banks of the Severn River. It was followed by a more dramatic display, the classic survey for Washington, DC, by Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant.

George Washington selected L’Enfant, a French designer, with a background which embraced the Baroque planning of Paris (this appealed to the aristocracy of the United States)

L’Enfant began, not with the gridiron street system, as city planners of today might do, but with the principal buildings and squares. “Lines or Avenues” of direct communication were laid between these cardinal points. Washington was envisioned, therefore, as Lewis Mumford explains it as “a series of interwoven spider webs”. Diagonal streets were overlaid upon a gridiron pattern.