ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the history of regular grid planning in human settlements before the 19th century with an emphasis on when and where. It argues that the importance of William Penn's 1682 plan for Philadelphia on the American town planning tradition lies in its size, not its composition. Penn's plan demonstrated town planning could occur on a previously unimaginable scale in the abundant lands of the New World. The most important examples in early American history are the Nine Square Plan of New Haven and William Penn's plan for Philadelphia. There is evidence for the emergence of distinctive and separate traditions of regular grid planning in the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient India and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Several historians trace the origins of the regular grid in America to the Spanish Laws of the Indies as a historical progression from the medieval bastides and planning principles of the European Renaissance.
