Savannah's mysterious historic plan
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- Опубліковано 12 кві 2017
- There’s an ongoing mystery that planners and urban historians have been trying to solve for over 100 years. How did an amateur planner forego centuries of established city design and implement a pattern that resulted in one of the most charming, walkable historic centers in the U.S.? For many, it’s just too hard to believe that he designed it out of thin air - there must’ve been an obvious precedent. Scholars have been searching for this precedent to solve this mystery since the 1800s.
The Making of Urban America, by John Reps: www.amazon.com/gp/product/069...
Resources on this topic:
savannahurbanstudies.blogspot....
Oglethorpe's Sources for the Savannah Plan, Bannister, 1961: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/98810...
Savannah video courtesy of Archive.org's Moving Image Archive
Photo sources:
- Wikimedia Commons
- Flickr user Steven Martin
maybe the fact that he never designed a city before is part of the reason he was able to come up with it. It gave him a fresh new perspective
Yeah, it does seem a little odd that historians assume that a complete amateur would be familiar with plans so obscure that few people can figure out where it came from.
I mean, all of the other theories make sense as well (obviously people get inspired by things that they’re exposed to), but the whole idea that amateurs can’t ever come up with anything unique is a bit... odd
The settlers of Boston that came to Charlestown and beyond. They were very smart people who built towns with their names for a future to others.
it's not unplausible that the some of the people coming overseas were asked to do things they had never done before with resources and a type of land/climate/building materials they had never used before and said, "screw it, I'll wing it and see how it goes."
Also, while the "grid" style is highly efficient, it's not always possible to build without extreme terraforming depending on the landscape. sometimes the disorganized, "small-town" design is necessary, and sometimes towns just dont need to be equipped to handle unlimited population growth that CEOverlords envision for urban areas.
Until one visits Savannah, one can not understand. First the city is immensely walkable, and due to it's design, very beautiful.
only the older city center. rest of the city is the same as anywhere else smh
@@sereysothe.a Well that's usually where people are talking about the city center or downtown. How would it look if the entire city of Savannah was laid out like that? There'd be no room for nothing but residential neighborhoods.
City planners need to realize that the lack of walkability destroys cities
JoshDoesEverything along with conservative car loving politicians and developers.
Who wants to walk north of the mason dixon in January feb july August....not I
Robert Preskop more like Democrat taxes forcing people into drive til you qualify mortgages because screw democrat homes and rents being only for the super rich elite globalist liberals!
@jojofromtx lol I don't know what planet you are living but in United States the Rich pay the highest taxes. The tax cut you are referring to is to corporations not to Rich individuals.
Those corporations hire people like you and others and give them jobs. Ask not the money from Rich but tell government to stop taxing the Common Man too not just the corporations and Economy would boom itself and people would be able to afford and spend more. The bailout packages for failing corporations should be deemed completely illegal and try to reduce paycheck of government employees if possible since government is literally a monopoly. They produce nothing and take money through taxes. Asks reduction of taxes for the Common Man.
@@robertpreskop4425 maybe in america. Yall cant find a mix between cars and pedestrians. Lmao
Savannah is my hometown. Many people think Savannah is so beautiful because of its old architecture and that's certainly part of it but Savannah's physical layout is beautiful. Each square you walk through is followed by another square which keeps you wanting to walk and explore.
In 8th grade all Georgia middle school students learn about Georgia's history and most plan a trip to Savannah for the entire school. I went way back when and had such a blast learning about the architecture and history behind the city with all of my classmates. I just went to Savannah last summer and this video makes me want to go back again. I highly recommend everyone to visit this charming and alluring city, it truly is one in a million.
He had SimCity 2000 BC...
Gotta love these legos microphone-supporting pillars
Lmao yeah i noticed that too
Great video, Savannah is now on my bucket list! The design reminds me of the Barcelona "superblocks" featured in a Vox video last year, but on a smaller scale.
Yes, that's a great video!
K Thomas When you go to Savannah, go see the cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It’s. Simply. Breathtaking. Vinnie Van GoGo’s pizza on Abercorn (I think). The Mansion on Forsyth Park. River Street. Etc.
Savannah is amazing!! You’ll love it!
I thought of Barcelona too. I'll have to check out that Vox video. Thanks!
i dont see why he would have to have seen it from some other city, it could be possible that he spent a good amount of time thinking about it and came to a good solution.
Most really good ideas are the result of inspiration, that doesn't have to mean that it was a concious decision on Oglethorpe's part.
We'd probably have witnessed similar patterns in other cities too, if this was an idea a person could come up with in a vacuum. He was planning a city after all, not just playing with a hobby, anything he did wrong could have lost him his job.
It seems like you could come up with the idea just by understanding how different features of a city contribute to beauty and satisfaction for residents living in a city.
It confuses me why it's a mystery at all. Many great ideas came from people with great vision!
Because academia is systematically biased against statements that say "everything we thought we knew about this was correct."
I was born and raised in Savannah. Though I've retired far away, it thrills me to know that so many people enjoy the beauty and charm of my hometown.
The walkability factor is so true; as a teenager, I often took a bus into town and walked around the squares, saw a movie at the Weiss and the Lucas, had lunch at Morrison's and visited a museum home or two (the Owens-Thomas and the Juliette Gordon Low homes were my favorites)...
As I began my work-related travels, I could see that Savannah's city plan was quite unique, but my appreciation for parks and squares only grew, especially in my time spent in Colombia, in the central square concept present in every town I lived in and visited.
Whatever plan a city follows, parks and squares are a major factor in not only walkability but also likeability and ultimately, livability.
This video is a jewel. Thank you!
Savannah is one of America’s greatest “hidden gems” and one of the comfiest places I’ve ever walked.
Savannah is indeed America's best planned city with its unique historic squares and carefully outlined blocks.
if we're all content to pretend Apple is "innovative" about technology, i don't see why we can't give Oglethorpe credit for having come up with this idea on his own.
Seeing my home city recognized makes me inordinately happy
The mystery is why Savannah, as it grew long beyond the colonial era, didn't logically grow out from the original matrix designed by Oglethorpe. The modern outskirts of Savannah are just as ugly and sprawled out and automobile-based as the rest of the post WWII built American public domain.
I live in Savannah and this is entirely true
That's not really a mystery though, after the world wars soldiers settled outside the city centers because they all started to have cars. This is a common pattern throughout the US, cities just started to accomodate the car better and that's something a grid is great at for example.
@@edgebattle5531 I live in Savannah also.
Well some developers may have viewed those park squares in the middle as a waste of real estate, so they would rather want to develop as much as they could instead of continuing the design. (aka capitalism)
@1rst : The American ideal.
Wow. Your videos have a good amount of quality to them for such a small channel. I mean really, this is *good*.
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
I'm gonna see how this plan fares in Cities: Skyline. I never thought of military camp planing as a city planning before, which is funny because now the rapprochement is so obvious! Genius!
Why isn't it possible that he came up with the idea on his own?
I used to make similar patterns in Sims city but I wasn't inspired by some fancy city planner.
I came to something similar only lately with Cities Sky Lines, but that is perhaps due to technological limitations of Sim City. My designs often include some park or landmark and then i put the buildings around it and make it connected with paths to roads around. Maybe it is evolution of older patterns into times of rationality and geometry. If you would look on old villages in Europe that were not constrained by terrain, they have like 4 roads connecting them with other. So why not to take design of small village modify it to make sense (read. make it rectangular) and then copy-paste it?
As well I would consider influence of New Atlantic by Bacon and possibly some myths and descriptions of ancient cities.
like it kind of makes sense, with blocks of Savannah, GA:
1. it makes it easy to plan developments and navigate
2. little space is used for cars
3. tons of space for recreation spread around neatly (instead of one big space that's far away)
4. houses face each other!
@@MrToradragon
I was always wondering what made Savannah such a nice city to walk through. Thanks for making this video.
Such an amazing city centre. I have been twice, and would love to go again. Thanks for the great video :-)
I guess a trip to Savannah is due at some point.
Check out Charleston, SC too
Yeah, Savannah is a great walkable city. Has anyone tried to implement this plan since then or re-organized a current grid around this idea?
None, AFAIK. That design is pretty simple to implement though. Comes down to money in the end, I think. Developers are more interested in putting as many habitats as they can while meeting formal rules, rather then making public spaces.
I think he inspired himself in Latin American cities built by Spain in the XVI century following Queen Isabella's and King Ferdinand's military camp during the siege of Granada in 1492. That camp later became the city of Santa Fe (Andalusia) also known as the first city of the Americas.
Santa Fe was designed according to the Laws of the Indies, one of the first planning laws on the books, written by the Spanish Crown. They could've drawn inspiration for the laws from military camps. Either way, I'm sure Oglethorpe had heard of the Laws of the Indies, and it could've inspired him.
Agreed!
I live in a suburb of Savannah and go to school in Savannah! Thanks for this video and your channel is great!! I hope more people would watch and subscribe!
It reminds me of the grid of Barcelona. The inner streets were later used for only pedestrians and bikes, the outer streets were given to automobiles.
I just got back from my first visit to Savannah and while everything was enjoyable, the most unexpected and satisfying part of my visit was learning about Oglethorpe and the city plan. It really is a wonder of design and I truly do not understand why it was not used in other cities.
A really interesting channel- this is what UA-cam is for!
Thanks! This is my favorite video on this channel to date.
It was aliens. He was inspired by aliens.
BRASÍLIA is the same idea of "Superblocks" (Superquadras) with the 6 level Lúcio Costa/Oscar Niemeyer/Le Corbusier units, the local commerce and public squares, parks, etc.
I live here at SQS 113 in Brasília, you can use Google Street View to check it out.
If you want, I may help you with footage of the city, or other explanation.
Great channel!
Ooh, an episode on Brasilia would be fantastic. I'll add it to my list of future episodes.
luizalvesRJ Brasilia should have hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics rather than that hyper violent, highly corrupt, polluted, slummy, scummy urban embarrassment known as Rio De Janeiro. Brasilia would have given a more positive image of your country to the rest of the world.
Such a helpful video. I am using it to help my undergraduate urban planning students understand the relationship between streets, blocks and good urban design. Well done, City Beautiful!
Finally, a channel that is smart and interesting too!! Thx!!
You do a great job. I enjoy these videos. Thank you
No wonder Sherman couldn't bring himself to burn the place down.
Jonathan Williams savannah was not burned by Sherman. The city surrender when he got to the outskirts of town.
Well there is a story that the mayor of Savannah at the time was a personal friend of Sherman thus the reason Savannah surrendered without a shot being fired
I just finished an urban planning class. Savahanna GA was a subject.
The Grid plan originally came from the Indus valley Civilization, employed in every city across North Western India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 5000 years ago. It was incorporated into the Vastu Shastra which is the indian science of construction and architecture which is still used today in south and south East Asia. The city of Jaipur, built in the early 1700s is a good example.
I was born and raised in downtown Savannah, a member of my family has lived around Washington Square for over 100 years! Washington Square is located in what’s known as the Old Fort Section and was home to many of the Irish Immigrants that arrived in the 1800’s, Savannah has a large Irish community and hosts one of the worlds largest St. Patricks Day celebrations! Every square in Savannah is unique, the only commonality is they are located every two city blocks east to west, north to south. Some have monuments, others have fountains, but all are beautiful! The greatest quality of Savannah is it’s residents, on a walk through downtown you’re guaranteed to meet some locals who make you feel welcome!
One of my absolute favorite cities!
I like Savannah. Great video. Would be cool to use this plan to reinvent the urban center in most cities.
I went to college in Savannah and by far my favorite part of learning there was walking the streets of Savannah after class and exploring the city and it’s beautiful architecture at my in a calm yet adventurous atmosphere. Because of the structure in the city squares, you could plot me anywhere in downtown Savannah and I could find my way home. I miss Savannah very much ♥️
Cool video! I love history mysteries!
Savannah is beautiful. This was fascinating.
Nicely presented video
I love Savannah. I went there recently and I highly recommend you visit it.
I lived in Savannah 15 years downtown and I loved it.
This is the best City in the State of Georgia and is certainly the most beautiful. It's squares where ingenious and even today makes for a pleasant place to be. James Edward Oglethorpe and his plan for the city of Savannah and its sister city of Brunswick both have the grid pattern with bisecting squares in between the buildings. Those squares are nice and they have a lot of history behind them. I also love the old Cobblestone streets too. It's a bit rough to drive over but it's very old school and I love it.
Walked through Savannah when I wlast visited. It was super walkable!
I visited Savannah and Charleston about two months ago. They are the loveliest cities I've ever seen in North America. Savannah's layout is extremely charming--if you go from Forsyth Park deep inland to the riverside, you cross so many lovely squares filled with mature trees that it's a treat just to walk. Charleston beat Savannah, though, when it came to uniformity of historical architecture. The urban core had a more haphazard layout, but the historical architecture was better preserved. There were some areas that I swear looked like an English country town. I've lived in Cambridge, UK, and parts of Charleston reminded me of that town. I would definitely visit again. These were very beautiful cities, ranking with the loveliest towns I've visited in Europe, Japan and Latin America.
It reminds me of Roman military forts with the way barracks are laid out.
My Perspective it kind of reminds me of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri with its neatly organized blocks of brick and concrete military barracks and troop support service facilities.
I really like your work, keep it up. i think more cities should be built in Savannah's pattern.
But I couldn't help noticing how you have increased the height of the mic by using Lego stand.
That is a jugaad right there.
Excellent!
Wow! I should visit this place!
The squares were used for meetings and Forsythe Park was used for Miltia training drills to keep the public ready to defend the city.
Was there yesterday. I really like it.
I used to live on Pulaski square. It was beautiful
beautiful video. :D
As a schoolboy I did a project on the distribution of new water conduits as part of a hypothetical project to improve living conditions in a slum, & the distribution I came up with largely resembles Oglethorpe's plan, albeit the wards weren't nice even squares as the slum was located on a hill & had a curved railway line running through it.
I'm taking a GA history class and my professor never really explained how he came up with the plan for Savannah. These make alot of sense though 👍
I lived in Savannah for 2 years for graduate school. I always wonder who Oglethorpe was since he has the major mall named after him. The history of historic downtown is amazing. There are 3 different tours that everyone should do when in Savannah: The historic downtown tour, the Black History tour, and the Savannah Ghost tour. They help piece together the history of that place! The squares, architecture and nature are beautiful!
He probably tested it out first in Cities: Skylines
Your mic stand is fantastic!
nice job
Love my city ❤
I have also read speculation that he knew of the Peking (Beijing) urban plan.
As someone who has been to Savannah. I can say that it is truly a beautiful place!
It’s a nice place to visit
Great town😀
Great video Dave. Unfortunately, my city was built mainly for 4 wheels. Not a lot of parks & squares for pedestrians.
Thanks! Yeah, Savannah makes other cities seem inadequate.
Rifdy Samsudin what city do you live in?
Paris has a design like that, a bunch of neighborhoods centered on a cute square. There's the Place des Vosges neighborhood east of the Marais, and the Palais-Royal neighborhood west of the Marais. A wealthy gentleman would've been exposed to (or visited) these new urban designs and would've been inspired to do the same. Covent Garden in London (which was built after Savannah was founded) copied these Parisian square designs.
Would love for you to go over Spanish city planning in North America. That grid pattern with a central square is common in LatAm but not in the US.
I’m just gonna take this for my DnD map. Thanks for helping me out!
3:10 its so bizarre being English and hearing him just call The Great Fire of London a massive fire, its like saying that in 2001 on the 11th of September a plane crash crashed into a building but not referring to it as 9/11.
The medieval plan was pretty much to fit as much as possible inside the walls.
They have those squares in South America. Is it possible he could have Spanish influences?
Can you link an example on google maps? While mixed use with small parks is definitely something present in Spain, I never saw that specific pattern presented here.
Very likely, Americans are good in many things but City planning is not their forte. They basically destroyed them with motorways and isolated suburbs.
Renan Aguilar-Valenzuela suburbs didnt come for another few hundred years by the time he planned Savannah. Besides even Brasilia was terribly designed
@@Renanaguilar basically nobody has designed a decent city in the past hundred years.
I am afraid you haven't gone to Germany in your life. Their cities were destroyed during WWII and they built them in a better manner.
It's a terrible shame this didn't become the norm in the Sun Belt. This reminds me of Barcelona's "megablocks".
It's quite common design in East Asia. Tang dynasty Chang'an famous for its seperated wards with their own spaciius gardens could be an earliest example for this model of city planning.
I don't see why he had to have gotten it from someone else. Plenty of great minds have come up with ideas entirely on their own, only using what they had experienced firsthand to guide them.
I never knew James Oglethorpe was so interesting, especially as he died in my town! (I mean technically Cranham was a separate parish back then, whilst now it's just an odd-on to Upminster)
I don't like walking very far to parks, so when I doodle cities I like to make them at regular intervals. Maybe he based the idea on what sort of town he would have wanted to live in? And maybe he liked the idea of having mini parks very close by, too? If I can come up with the idea on my own with no real city-planning experience nor without having known about any such precedents (before having watched this video), I'm sure he could have come up with the same idea on his own, too.
I do like your theory about military encampments, though. I wonder what other tricks the military has come up with that might be useful for city planning purposes? You should do a video on that.
I heard that Jackson, MS was planned in a similar way. After the city was burned in the civil war people built homes and businesses over what used to be parks.
My favorite city, besides Barcelona!
You should look at New Town, Edinburgh. It has a similar innovative Enlightenment feel.
Would be interesting to implement the Barcelona Superblock City structure in savannah because of the lack of cars in this city. Because it is mainly a College town now... home to SCAD.
So you're telling me Oglethorpe basically invented superblocks? Because that layout is incredibly similar to a lot of modern superblocks
I was there not too long ago and I gotta say, its infrastructure is extremely convenient when it comes to walking, but driving and parking downtown is a challenge. It's an older city, so the roads are more tight than your average city that had decades of redevelopment, however I will say if a city is trying to adopt the Spanish Superblock method for walker/biker friendly districts then Savannah model would work a lot better for pedestrians and drivers. Anyhow, Savannah is a gorgeous little city.
proud Georgian🙋♂️
I would imagine, that he utilized ideas from multiple areas. Likely combining and working out the various plans as mentioned in the video. However, Rome & Greece were also known for having well built empires due to having great designs, and just as much as the U.S. is influenced by these two nations, it's not unlikely that he would've designed this layout without having considered the same influential roots.
Though, not really all that well built for various things like building mixed use systems, I'm going to be testing it out in SimCity 4 to see how well this would work with it's particular limitations. I've got the newer SC game, but, 4 is better designed for it. I had the idea for some time, but, I lost track of the video, so it's taken me while to look at it.
I've been through Savannah fairly recently even, and I do love it's basic design, though, I was unaware of how it was laid out, until watching this video after a quick trip to the beach, a couple months back. But, looking at this design, it's rather interesting, because, while playing through SC3K some years back, I had come up with a rather similar design. Larger zones, to allow for such things as parks and green spaces, so that it would help to boost land values, but, to also give the people places to relax in.
And, just from that perspective, I feel that, it's likely Oglethorpe would have easily viewed the grid based pattern as a good start, but that it would still have needed adjustments to improve it into a more perfect design. The description of the lots mention that they were wider to prevent the spreading of fire, so, obviously he knew that there were many problems to consider. It's likely that such things as the central squares, and even the Trust lots, would have been set aside for such things as wells and such, to help reduce the damage of fire.
However, while I love the grid based structure, I still rather like the, minor, chaotic mix of streets and roads, but, I feel that the 'unplanned' aspect, should be done rather sparingly, so as to compliment the grid, but, not be so complex, that it reduces the atmosphere of the city. Walkability is still rather important, and having close neighborhoods is what can help a city to prosper correctly.
Part2: Where does a youtuber get the inspiration to use Legos to raise up a microphone stand?
Many of the squares here in London have churches/old public buildings (schools, churches, etc.) on opposite sides with residential buildings across. Not sure if that is because of Victorian influences or if that's something Oglethorpe would have been able to observe.
It just reminds me a little bit of the style, Arabian cities were planned in the middle ages.
Even though there weren't these grid like blocks, these cities were usually built up, around different sized, with each other connected squares.
So in the end these cities looked like medieval European cities, mixed up with "square oriented" cities like Savannah.
this really caught me off guard
I was in Savannah over spring break. I did a ghost tour there and my tour guide explained it was the spanish american war that caused this pattern. They would have men on the outside and women and children on the inside if the spanish ever attacked. At least that's what I heard from my Savannah native tour guide.
Honestly , as a pre-teen before any formal study in urban planning I’d build “Savannahs” on Sim City. It’s not rocket science lol ....but check out La Plata ,Argentina. It has a system of diagonals that make it more interesting.
Or maybe he just came up with the idea all on his own. Some people really do think outside of the box.
It is a military inspired plan, because those are designed to be rational and organized. The London plan was also inspired by the military. If on any campaign like he was with Savoy setting up camp is a thing they do again and again and again, yes he came up with a version of his own but the pattern was internalized by having done so a dozen times.
About right I think but maybe not so new for the time.
Reason 1 is part of the whole late 17th-early 18th century speculator's grid with Georgian square thing. Some of the new areas of London and elsewhere in Britain got this - Britain and British ideas/examples would obviously have been the principal inspiration for Oglethorpe (and the East Coast 'European colonists' who founded cities who were English except in relation to New Amsterdam), and he no doubt would have been familiar with philadelphia and Charleston.
Reason 2 makes sense as Georgia was founded as both a debtor's colony and a military frontier province. Practical examples might not have existed, but town squares would have been known to be used for parades and assembly points for soldiers. I'd even go so far as to say the assumed idea of founding an English/British New World 'Citie' from scratch would assume some sort of Williamsburg/Philly grid and occasional squares thrown in.
Reason 3 is obviously an immediate inspiration, but it too must go back to the other 2 reasons (military use of squares for a planned frontier colony, Charleston, New Haven etc as New World examples of grid/square patterns - planned examples by the Carolina proprietors, note the use of the term Margravate).
Don't underestimate the ability of an amateur to be original, and to get lucky.
Oglethorpe wasn't just laying out a city plan, he was laying out a social organization and way of life as well. While the open squares and the walkability and mixed use are what are talked about today, the plan encompassed much more than that. At the time, of course, walkability and mixed use were the norm since cars hadn't been invented yet. Since each "tything" comprised 10 households that were supposed to train together for defense, I'd have to go with one of the military precedents if you insist that there must be one. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oglethorpe_Plan
Nobody ever used military camp design for cities before? So many great vities like London and Paris arose from Roman military camps.
That is bit different, you have old military camp or palace and you slowly redesign it and build over and change it over time and original design is lost mostly, but what he said is that somebody would use methods used for design of military camp right away for city. And what is more interesting, he would use design for temporary camp, not for fortified city. Square based walls and camps were seen as inferior to star forts during given period. And for example in Europe star fortresses were build as late as late 18th century. And they contained whole towns inside.
4:12 - Regarding that military camp plan from 1586, I am not sure how to spell out the name of the person behind it (pronounced say-zar davily). Can you clarify it?
The big problem with grids is that traditionally people wanted to get to the city centre where there was a market or government. Zig-zagging around a grid city is extremely annoying, as any driver in a US grid city will tell you. And all those intersections cause gridlock.
One question you did not ask is why was James Oglethorpe chosen to make this plan? Also, it’s a bit arrogant of so-called professionals to assume that just because someone has never formally studied something in a university setting that they would not be capable of having a high degree of ability in that subject. The answer to your question in this video could be something as simple as maybe he didn’t like walking, or maybe he liked public parks and wanted things to be close and accessible to himself. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that having a grid pattern makes things simpler than building ad hoc. So maybe the answer is as simple as starting with a grid pattern and then modifying it slightly.
Yeah, that could be! I think you're actually selling Olgethorpe short by saying it's a slight modification of a grid. It's fairly revolutionary!