The Hippodamian Plan

The Hippodamian plan takes its name from Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon. The Hippodamian plan consists of a grid laid out inside the city wall that makes it easier to plan and plot out lands when needed. However, saying Hippodamus came up with the Hippodamian plan does not mean that greeks never used a system where a grid would divide the land into plots. Greeks used the grid method before creating their cities and planned which building would go where. In most cases, The agora would be in the middle, and the roads that would reach the agora, also known as via sacra, would make up the city's main roads. The grid method would then take action and create branches of roads that would create the streets, and the places that were left behind would be plots for houses, markets, and courts. Hippodamus offered this plan in order to divide society into classes and then settle them accordingly to their classes. These classes were artisans, farmers, and warriors. He then went on proposing the establishment of a supreme court that would see over the cases that the other courts may have decided wrongly. The members of the courts would be the three classes mentioned before and the officials that were elected from the three classes. In the exert, Aristotle, states that because artisans and farmers did not possess arms, sharing one office would lead to them being slaves under those who possessed. Which essentially highlights the most crucial problem of this system. Although, at first, this system may seem reasonable for organized city planning and better exercise of justice, dividing people into groups that do not have a balance of power will cause problems for those who lack the advantage that the other ones have. In my opinion, having a grid-like plan works best for the city. First of all, it offers a plan that is more organized than the plans showing where can be used as what and showing the boundaries of the owner. This way, no one can steal land from the other person without anyone knowing. Secondly, if the plan gets more regulated, like establishing height limits and such, it can make the government's job easier to see what is happening in the city. What can ruin an organized city's planning? Diving the people of the city rather than dividing the plot of land of the city. During the Graeco-Roman times dividing, people, because of their socio-economic status, was not something that did not exist; in fact, it was the usual thing to do. However, establishing an urban city does not require people to be divided into groups because of their socio-economic status.