Sam Roberts in the New York Times writes on the 200th birthday for the certification by city commissioners of a map by John Randel which subdivided Manhattan island into a two dimensional street grid with rectangular plots on which modern Manhattan arose.
The grid was the great leveler. By shifting millions of cubic yards of
earth and rock, it carved out modest but equal flat lots (mostly 25 by
100 feet) available for purchase. And if it fostered what de Tocqueville
viewed as relentless monotony, its coordinates also enabled drivers and
pedestrians to figure out where they stood, physically and
metaphorically.
“This is the purpose of New York’s geometry,” wrote Roland Barthes, the
20th-century French philosopher. “That each individual should be
poetically the owner of the capital of the world.”
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