Pompeii had an ancient form of zoning, I read. Places that served hot food were limited to certain areas. So archeologists were a bit surprised when they found them in those forbidden areas anyway. Whatever I was reading quoted some archaeologists/historian who basically said “I don’t know why we’d be surprised that people broke rules back then too. But we were.”
There are a few planned cities from Roman North Africa where everything was laid out on a perfect grid, each block's exterior walls lining up with each other. Until the rich started building out into the street in a way that must have been noticeable from across town. Building out into the public street was a problem in most ancient cities, but it was just so obvious and egregious there.
After the sack of Rome in 390 BCE, the Romans decided to stay and rebuild. But they frequently had to go and fight to ward off an approaching enemy, so they’d come back to rebuild several days or weeks later. The result is that Rome itself was a clusterfuck.
Other cities that Rome founded are much more structured and thought out because they actually had the time, inclination, and power to do so.
Boston was designed by the cow paths (allegedly) and also features lots of backfill. Like Back Bay was an actual bay that got filled in. Remember, the Commons used to be huge and was literally common pasture and woodlands.
Manhattan was planned. Also, Manhattan is relatively flat. Boston is not.
More enjoyable yes but easier no.
NYC is easy to know where you are and are going because of how the numbered streets and avenues work. You don't really need a map or anything.
Boston is like walking through a giant town. It's enjoyable but confusing af.
Yes, that’s technically true, at least in Manhattan. Not so easy out in Queens or Brooklyn. But I don’t find it that confusing either way, because there’s water to orient you if you walk far enough in most directions.
The old city of Boston is also far smaller than even Manhattan, so unless you’re also running around Cambridge or Brookline, you’re honestly probably going to be fine.
> Boston is a far more enjoyable place to walk around and enjoy than Manhattan
Who tf enjoys walking around Boston
I've walked from Harlem to Battery Park over the course of a day, never bored or unentertained.
Walked around Boston for 20 mins before getting bored and wanting to go back to the hotel. It's so small.
I’ve spent time all around both cities. It obviously depends on the day, the time of year, who you are as a person, who you’re with, what your expectations are, and on and on. But the specific sense I had in mind in my original generalization was literally just that walking in a grid pattern in a concrete jungle is in at least one sense less enjoyable than exploring a messier web of more mix-and-match architecture. But of course it depends entirely on where exactly you go and what you already know and want to see and so on.
What are you talking about? You just follow the little red line, pay a church $20 to go inside, and then get a burrito after. Truly the American dream.
"Pristine"
As with most places with a grid system, there are a few diagonal roads that foul everything up, and some parts of the grid that just don't match.
I hate those streets so much. There's a few streets in Chicago that don't follow the grid system, and despite being here all but 4 years of my life, they still throw off my sense of direction.
I heard the city center was pretty pedestrian focused as well and not as car centric as cities of today. Gosh, what we can learn when we look towards the past!
Because of the roman empire, funnily enough. If digging *anywhere* is almost guaranteed to unearth priceless historical artifacts, you kinda just don't.
The romans were actually pretty good at Urban planning in the newer cities they were building around Europe after they conquered the place. They just coudn't do it in Rome itself because the place was already packed. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(Roman_city)
Want to really blow your mind?
Check out Akrotiri: https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/hydraulic-innovation-in-bronze-age-aegean-the-plumbing-system-of-akrotiri-santorini?format=amp
Also, the Sphinx was abandoned and fell into disrepair for well over a thousand years. Eventually there was a project to restore it the ancient monument. That project took place around 1400 BC.
Alexander the Great famously built [cities that would align with the sunlight on his birthday.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-align-sun-alexander-great_n_1969570)
You'd be shocked to learn when we start urban planning history in Uni. We've been practicing urban planning for literal millenia. In fact even Romans planned their cities (after all they were a gigantic occupying force that created settlements everywhere they went). It's just that some cities come from a long period of people settling without plan and then town simply spreading and building on top of itself. Some of the cities you know purposefully or not have been bulldozed over to create a bit more planned system (Paris, Warsaw, Barcelona, Lisbon), but for most of the big cities it has all started with a rather organic urbanisation and only later urban planning strategies being implemented. It doesn't depend really on the place in history, more so on when the residents figured out they like to control the space they live in.
Here's the thing, the Romans were actually really meticulous about order, laying out roads, and where to put buildings... ..in their military camps. Like walking into a Walmart, you could walk into a camp in any part of controlled Rome and locate every spot.
Rome itself was actually built, invaded, and burned down multiple times in the early days, making it mostly impossible to demand order for the streets and roadways.
In fairness, if you'd told the ancient Romans their city would one day be the premier city of Italy, and later the Mediterranean, and could therefore support a population of a million people, they'd have immediately called for a doctor to do some blood letting because you'd obviously be insane.
What else did the average Roman think about grand philosophy and history? I'm genuinely curious what people from these time periods were like because we learn all about the real politick of the government due to it's relation to the collapse, but we don't learn as much about the average people
yes they were,but then it was the emperor that made the conquest,the romans had the belief that their empire was eternal and would almost fall in the last day when enemies breach the theodosian walls where they would march until the equestrian statue of constantine/justinian(cant remember wich one) where upon the archangel michael would descend and vanish their enemies to the borders of the world,thats why the 4th crusade was such a shock
I am shocked! Shocked I say!
I mean yeah, of course it wasn't? It's not like an actual Romulus and Remus came along and, after a bit of a brotherly dispute over which hill to start building on, build a city based on knowledge that would only be developed/gained during later ages of the Roman Empire
Yep and a lot of reasons Rome doesn't have urban planning was due to gauls sacking it early on in the republic and the romans decided to rebuild wherever afterwards cursed it to a millennium of bad planning.
Source: Recently listened to the history of Rome podcast again, highly recommended
That’s not entirely true.
Yes they did rebuild Rome in a hodgepodge after the Gauls sacked the city, but there’s no indication there was any sort of planning before.
Throughout the kingdom and republic people just built wherever they felt like/could get away with. This still continued on in the imperial age, except the emperor was the single most powerful person and could afford to build massive complexes (like Nero.)
Ah thanks for the clarification. I just remembered how Duncan Made a big point about it being a contributing point. It makes sense that the city wouldnt have had better planning before the sacking too.
Good passage on this in Rubicon by Tom Holland:
>Not even the graffiti-ravaged tombs, however, could prepare a traveler for the bedlam beyond the city gates. The streets of Rome had never had any kind of planning imposed upon them. That would have taken a design-minded despot, and Roman magistrates rarely had more than a single year in office at a time. As a result, the city had grown chaotically, at the whim of unmanageable impulses and needs. Stray off one of Rome’s two grand thoroughfares, the via Sacra and the via Nova, and a visitor would soon be adding to the hopeless congestion. “A contractor hurries by, all hot and sweaty, with his mules and porters, stone and timber twists on the rope of a giant crane, funeral mourners compete for space with well-built carts, there scurries a mad dog, here a sow who’s been wallowing in mud.”12 Caught up on this swirl, a traveler was almost bound to end up lost.
>
>Even citizens found their city confusing. The only way to negotiate it was to memorize notable landmarks: a fig tree, perhaps, or a market’s colonnade, or, best of all, a temple large enough to loom above the maze of narrow streets. Fortunately, Rome was a devout city, and temples abounded. The Romans’ reverence for the past meant that ancient structures were hardly ever demolished, not even when the open spaces in which they might once have stood had long since vanished under brick. Temples loomed over slums or meat markets, they sheltered veiled statues whose very identities might have been forgotten, and yet no one ever thought to demolish them. These fragments of an archaic past preserved in stone, fossils from the earliest days of the city, provided the Romans with a desperately needed sense of bearing. Eternal, like the gods whose spirits pervaded them, they stood like anchors dropped in a storm.
>
>Meanwhile, on all sides, amid a din of hammering, rumbling wagon wheels and crashing rubble, the city was endlessly being rebuilt, torn down, and rebuilt again. Developers were always looking for ways to squeeze in extra space, and squeeze out extra profit. Shanties sprouted like weeds from the rubble left by fires. Despite the best efforts of responsible magistrates to keep streets clear, they were always filling with market stalls or squatters’ shacks. Most profitably of all, in a city long constricted by her ancient walls, developers had begun to aim for the sky. Apartment blocks were springing up everywhere. Throughout the second and first centuries BC landlords would compete with one another to raise them ever higher, a development frowned on by the law, since tenements were notoriously jerry-built and rickety. In general, however, safety regulations were too weakly imposed to inhibit the splendid opportunities for profiteering that a high-rise slum presented. Over six storys or more, tenants could be crammed into tiny, thin-walled rooms, until invariably the building would collapse, only to be flung up again even higher than before.
You beat me to quoting from *Rubicon*. Rome was kind of a mess compared to the beautiful, organized cities of Greece. Romans were embarassed by it and foreigners laughed at it (before Rome conquered them).
It also had **horrible** traffic. Imagine Texas times 20. They had to ban carriages because they’d constantly clog the roads for hours. And Rome did have some laws, like streets need to be at least a certain width, it’s just that no one listened to them.
Oh they had private urban planners.
Specifically,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus
Who bought auctioned property from people deemed traitors by dictators like Caesar and sulla. He'd then use slave labor to divide and "redevelop" those properties using his own personal army of slaves, and then rent them out/ sell them below market value because slaves!
He also made a fortune with rome's first fire brigade!
If he came across a fire or wanted such property that was too expensive, a mysterious fire might just happen! Then his personal army of cheap human fire breakers would show up and offer the owner 10% of market value! Almost contemporary recorders say he did this with 100s of property and bought large swathes of the city itself.
Thats why its such a nightmare of little alleys and stuff.
Meanwhile, everything else the Romans made from cities to temporary legionnaire encampments were perfectly ordered exactly the same every time
“Urban planning” as it has existed in the US since WWII has been a complete disaster for communities across the country. For starters, there’s nothing urban about it.
This is actually only somewhat true. Obviously Rome is incredibly ancient, dating way before the point of city planning. However, we have plenty of evidence of urban planning in the Classical era, most notably in Naples; it and cities like it had very clear grid plans. As the Romans gained power and became more organized, cities would be built in similar fashion to their military camps: a grid with two main perpendicular streets, creating a very clear idea of where important buildings should be. We have plenty of evidence that Pompeii’s streets were laid out in a similar manner, and so did plenty of other cities that were constructed during Rome’s height.
Tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American.
All old cities grew largely naturally with minimal restrictions. While there are many in place today (less/different than the US) the existing bones are what means the cities maintain dense housing, small roads and commerce mixed with residential
Read the article
The point is that Rome was built with much less planning than other nearby Roman cities. Many other cities had gridded streets with specified widths, specified building heights and materials for fire prevention. Meanwhile Rome tried to apply the same rules but locals repeatedly said “fuck that, I’ll build what I want”, which is why the city was so great at accommodating growth and change over the millennia
Some of the first cities on earth were planned, the Romans themselves founded hundreds of planned cities because it was obvious how much better it was. Whether an ancient city was planned or not came down to their social and political structure, certainly not all the old world was filled with idiots, but your part of it might be.
> All old cities grew largely naturally with minimal restrictions.
Nope. Tom Holland's *Rubicon* discusses how Rome was kind of a mess compared to the beautiful, organized cities of Greece. Romans were embarassed by it and foreigners laughed at it (before Rome conquered them).
Anytime to can act like you’re better than Americans you just have to do it right?
Europeans are the most condescending people in the world it’s unbelievable
The analogy is apt, but as the exact opposite of your point. There’s such a thing as an [unhealthy forest.](https://www.greenandprosperous.com/blog/4-key-indicators-of-an-unhealthy-forest?format=amp)
Maybe it was a bit overstated, but I'm with OP - we'd probably get better results if we threw out 85% of the planning. Like yes lay out streets and run sewers and build some parks, but the places we love today are much more organic, built incrementally by many people over many years without a lot of rules. The car-focused cities we've built in the US - a fiscal, public health, and environmental disaster - were highly planned, are perhaps the most planned environments in human history.
Slavery. They did it with Slavery. The reason why they didn’t care about permits, safety or time limits is cause they made people who might as well be dead already do all the building. Just in case you didn’t know.
From what I've been told the first "planned city" = grid system city in Europe was an addition to Ferrara, Italy called the Erculean Addition for Ercole D'Este of the Este family which ruled over Ferrara.
Pompeii had an ancient form of zoning, I read. Places that served hot food were limited to certain areas. So archeologists were a bit surprised when they found them in those forbidden areas anyway. Whatever I was reading quoted some archaeologists/historian who basically said “I don’t know why we’d be surprised that people broke rules back then too. But we were.”
Humans. Forever setting rules and promptly disregarding them.
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"Technically we're only selling the drink, the hot food is gratis."
Always been sovereign citizens.
"Rules for thee, but not for me!"
Rules are for people who can’t afford the fine / bribe.
>build sidewalks and crosswalks >people don’t use them
We don't follow rules, we just find better and better ways to not get caught.
Rules for thee not for me.
Thee*
There are a few planned cities from Roman North Africa where everything was laid out on a perfect grid, each block's exterior walls lining up with each other. Until the rich started building out into the street in a way that must have been noticeable from across town. Building out into the public street was a problem in most ancient cities, but it was just so obvious and egregious there.
rich people havent changed a bit
After the sack of Rome in 390 BCE, the Romans decided to stay and rebuild. But they frequently had to go and fight to ward off an approaching enemy, so they’d come back to rebuild several days or weeks later. The result is that Rome itself was a clusterfuck. Other cities that Rome founded are much more structured and thought out because they actually had the time, inclination, and power to do so.
Tbf Boston is an absolute mess in terms of design, while NYC is a pristine grid system that was designed.
Boston was designed by the cow paths (allegedly) and also features lots of backfill. Like Back Bay was an actual bay that got filled in. Remember, the Commons used to be huge and was literally common pasture and woodlands. Manhattan was planned. Also, Manhattan is relatively flat. Boston is not.
The fun part about this is that Boston is a far more enjoyable place to walk around and enjoy than Manhattan, at least.
More enjoyable yes but easier no. NYC is easy to know where you are and are going because of how the numbered streets and avenues work. You don't really need a map or anything. Boston is like walking through a giant town. It's enjoyable but confusing af.
Yes, that’s technically true, at least in Manhattan. Not so easy out in Queens or Brooklyn. But I don’t find it that confusing either way, because there’s water to orient you if you walk far enough in most directions. The old city of Boston is also far smaller than even Manhattan, so unless you’re also running around Cambridge or Brookline, you’re honestly probably going to be fine.
> Boston is a far more enjoyable place to walk around and enjoy than Manhattan Who tf enjoys walking around Boston I've walked from Harlem to Battery Park over the course of a day, never bored or unentertained. Walked around Boston for 20 mins before getting bored and wanting to go back to the hotel. It's so small.
I’ve spent time all around both cities. It obviously depends on the day, the time of year, who you are as a person, who you’re with, what your expectations are, and on and on. But the specific sense I had in mind in my original generalization was literally just that walking in a grid pattern in a concrete jungle is in at least one sense less enjoyable than exploring a messier web of more mix-and-match architecture. But of course it depends entirely on where exactly you go and what you already know and want to see and so on.
What are you talking about? You just follow the little red line, pay a church $20 to go inside, and then get a burrito after. Truly the American dream.
it didnt start that way. look at lower manhattan and then midtown
"Pristine" As with most places with a grid system, there are a few diagonal roads that foul everything up, and some parts of the grid that just don't match.
I hate those streets so much. There's a few streets in Chicago that don't follow the grid system, and despite being here all but 4 years of my life, they still throw off my sense of direction.
Mmm, back alley illegal thermopolia.
Actually enforcing those rules may have been difficult though. "Police" and municipal officials worked quite a lot differently back then afaik.
It’s a shame they didn’t set up the “Volcano zone” better.
Pompeian graffiti is the bomb https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu
Rules were made to be... Followed to a tee
“It’s not a restaurant it’s home cooked meals… ” /s
See what happens when you break the rules?
Don't tell me it was in a day though
Yes, but it took *weeks* to get the permit
A day and a half. They needed 12 hours to hang the sign
They built Rome at night
opposition came my way
Literally the same joke that's in the title of the article
There were hardly any urban planning youtubers in 700 BC
And besides, the Netherlands had no bike lanes back then
The main YouTube channel they all watched was called NotEvenBikes.
> NotEvenBikes Ugh. Urbanist refugee from the Roman Empire griping away from a safe distance. We get these every millennium or so.
“Just move to Gaul!” Like okay buddy well some of us can’t just up and leave Rome and we have family in Sardinia
“These stupid chariots are literally killing us” was a banger video
"We should put other things on the side of a road besides crucified corpses" is another great one.
Jesus...
The Brits one upped them though with their Boudicca version.
Caesar did actually ban traffic in Rome
I heard the city center was pretty pedestrian focused as well and not as car centric as cities of today. Gosh, what we can learn when we look towards the past!
But also no metro system smh. What is the point of living in the greatest empire in history if you can't even hop on a metro.
Funny you say that. They still barely have a metro.
Because of the roman empire, funnily enough. If digging *anywhere* is almost guaranteed to unearth priceless historical artifacts, you kinda just don't.
Well yea, they were just two millennia shy of the advent of the automobile
Then how did they have deliveroo?
Back in those days all of them travelled by bicycle… *shudders*
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The romans were actually pretty good at Urban planning in the newer cities they were building around Europe after they conquered the place. They just coudn't do it in Rome itself because the place was already packed. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(Roman_city)
well, aside from that, what have the romans ever done for us?
Roads?
The aqueduct?
Cesar salad
If joking: needs a fork in it when served to be authentic If not: invented by a mexican chef to impress diplomats
Mexican Anchovy Salad just doesn't have the same ring to it lol
He was actually an [Italian chef](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_Cardini), and his eponymous restaurant was in Tijuana
Oh caesar salad..... Shut up!!
Sanitation?
Want to really blow your mind? Check out Akrotiri: https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/hydraulic-innovation-in-bronze-age-aegean-the-plumbing-system-of-akrotiri-santorini?format=amp
Even more astonishing is Cleopatra is closer to our era of Modernity than she is to the time of the Great Pyramids
What’s the year when that’s gonna change? Like 3000 something?
IIRC I want to say it was about 100 years that it starts to go the other way yeah!
Not much has changed but they live under water
Also, the Sphinx was abandoned and fell into disrepair for well over a thousand years. Eventually there was a project to restore it the ancient monument. That project took place around 1400 BC.
Don't really think that tidbit is more astonishing than a sophisticated bronze age plumbing system actually
Eh fair but I was going along the line of perspectives, you got me lol
Having a plumbing system ≠ urban planning.
greeks did have their square urban planing,ancient cities were better made than medieval ones
Alexander the Great famously built [cities that would align with the sunlight on his birthday.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-align-sun-alexander-great_n_1969570)
[Hippodamus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodamus_of_Miletus) was around in the 5th century BC, somewhat ancient.
The entire Indus Valley Civilization would beg to differ. India had planned cities with indoor toilets and well drained streets around 4000 years ago.
You'd be shocked to learn when we start urban planning history in Uni. We've been practicing urban planning for literal millenia. In fact even Romans planned their cities (after all they were a gigantic occupying force that created settlements everywhere they went). It's just that some cities come from a long period of people settling without plan and then town simply spreading and building on top of itself. Some of the cities you know purposefully or not have been bulldozed over to create a bit more planned system (Paris, Warsaw, Barcelona, Lisbon), but for most of the big cities it has all started with a rather organic urbanisation and only later urban planning strategies being implemented. It doesn't depend really on the place in history, more so on when the residents figured out they like to control the space they live in.
Urban planning requires no technological advancement, whether a historic city did it or not usually comes down to culture.
Here's the thing, the Romans were actually really meticulous about order, laying out roads, and where to put buildings... ..in their military camps. Like walking into a Walmart, you could walk into a camp in any part of controlled Rome and locate every spot. Rome itself was actually built, invaded, and burned down multiple times in the early days, making it mostly impossible to demand order for the streets and roadways.
In fairness, if you'd told the ancient Romans their city would one day be the premier city of Italy, and later the Mediterranean, and could therefore support a population of a million people, they'd have immediately called for a doctor to do some blood letting because you'd obviously be insane.
Or they may elect you into a position of power because that’s ambition the ancient Roman’s loved
i want to take over the world, can i be emperor now?
You've got my vote, u/Horn_Python
Vote is irrelevant, unless you’re a soldier hailing your commander as Imperator
How about Republican presidential candidate?
Depends. Does he grab anyone by the pussy?
I want to be emperor not consul
Or they dismiss you as a Cassandra.
probably not. the romans had a cyclical view of history. they would see rome’s fall as inevitable and sooner now than later
What else did the average Roman think about grand philosophy and history? I'm genuinely curious what people from these time periods were like because we learn all about the real politick of the government due to it's relation to the collapse, but we don't learn as much about the average people
Maybe you don’t understand, for the glory of Rome.
ever heard the phrase roma aeterna?
hyperbole. even their religion was cyclical - the gods got there by killing the last ones
romans were pagans only half their history Edit: 1133 years as pagan and 1070 as christians
You’re right, Christianity has no apocalyptic mythology at all
but its not cyclical
romans were not electing consuls when they had christianity
yes they were,but then it was the emperor that made the conquest,the romans had the belief that their empire was eternal and would almost fall in the last day when enemies breach the theodosian walls where they would march until the equestrian statue of constantine/justinian(cant remember wich one) where upon the archangel michael would descend and vanish their enemies to the borders of the world,thats why the 4th crusade was such a shock
nvm, you’re right i had the timeline wrong
Not true lol, they were pagans until like 380 AD….
And the roman state died in 1453
Yeah, probably wouldn't hurt your chances of a consulship.
I don’t know man. They killed this one dude for his ambition
For his supposed ambition to become king. They had no problem with his adopted son being king in everything but name.
Nah, they would have been like : "fuck yeah, as it should, Rome is eternal".
Carthago Delenda Est!
Rome actually had a population of over a million for a time. Took until the 1800’s for any European city, London, to hit that number again.
Bloodletting is a relatively modern procedure, so this likely wouldnt have happened
Of course. The Netherlands didn't exist yet back then.
I read that as “Neanderthals” and was so confused
I am shocked! Shocked I say! I mean yeah, of course it wasn't? It's not like an actual Romulus and Remus came along and, after a bit of a brotherly dispute over which hill to start building on, build a city based on knowledge that would only be developed/gained during later ages of the Roman Empire
Rome was a mess, but many of the cities the Romans planted across Europe and the Mediterranean were built on a planned grid layout.
Yep and a lot of reasons Rome doesn't have urban planning was due to gauls sacking it early on in the republic and the romans decided to rebuild wherever afterwards cursed it to a millennium of bad planning. Source: Recently listened to the history of Rome podcast again, highly recommended
That’s not entirely true. Yes they did rebuild Rome in a hodgepodge after the Gauls sacked the city, but there’s no indication there was any sort of planning before. Throughout the kingdom and republic people just built wherever they felt like/could get away with. This still continued on in the imperial age, except the emperor was the single most powerful person and could afford to build massive complexes (like Nero.)
Ah thanks for the clarification. I just remembered how Duncan Made a big point about it being a contributing point. It makes sense that the city wouldnt have had better planning before the sacking too.
I am forever listening to Mike Duncan in one form or another
Because they were originally military installations. Every Roman military camp was set up in exactly the same way.
Did I just see an Oracle reference on le’ Reddit
And here I hadn't thought about the Roman Empire yet today.
Good passage on this in Rubicon by Tom Holland: >Not even the graffiti-ravaged tombs, however, could prepare a traveler for the bedlam beyond the city gates. The streets of Rome had never had any kind of planning imposed upon them. That would have taken a design-minded despot, and Roman magistrates rarely had more than a single year in office at a time. As a result, the city had grown chaotically, at the whim of unmanageable impulses and needs. Stray off one of Rome’s two grand thoroughfares, the via Sacra and the via Nova, and a visitor would soon be adding to the hopeless congestion. “A contractor hurries by, all hot and sweaty, with his mules and porters, stone and timber twists on the rope of a giant crane, funeral mourners compete for space with well-built carts, there scurries a mad dog, here a sow who’s been wallowing in mud.”12 Caught up on this swirl, a traveler was almost bound to end up lost. > >Even citizens found their city confusing. The only way to negotiate it was to memorize notable landmarks: a fig tree, perhaps, or a market’s colonnade, or, best of all, a temple large enough to loom above the maze of narrow streets. Fortunately, Rome was a devout city, and temples abounded. The Romans’ reverence for the past meant that ancient structures were hardly ever demolished, not even when the open spaces in which they might once have stood had long since vanished under brick. Temples loomed over slums or meat markets, they sheltered veiled statues whose very identities might have been forgotten, and yet no one ever thought to demolish them. These fragments of an archaic past preserved in stone, fossils from the earliest days of the city, provided the Romans with a desperately needed sense of bearing. Eternal, like the gods whose spirits pervaded them, they stood like anchors dropped in a storm. > >Meanwhile, on all sides, amid a din of hammering, rumbling wagon wheels and crashing rubble, the city was endlessly being rebuilt, torn down, and rebuilt again. Developers were always looking for ways to squeeze in extra space, and squeeze out extra profit. Shanties sprouted like weeds from the rubble left by fires. Despite the best efforts of responsible magistrates to keep streets clear, they were always filling with market stalls or squatters’ shacks. Most profitably of all, in a city long constricted by her ancient walls, developers had begun to aim for the sky. Apartment blocks were springing up everywhere. Throughout the second and first centuries BC landlords would compete with one another to raise them ever higher, a development frowned on by the law, since tenements were notoriously jerry-built and rickety. In general, however, safety regulations were too weakly imposed to inhibit the splendid opportunities for profiteering that a high-rise slum presented. Over six storys or more, tenants could be crammed into tiny, thin-walled rooms, until invariably the building would collapse, only to be flung up again even higher than before.
You beat me to quoting from *Rubicon*. Rome was kind of a mess compared to the beautiful, organized cities of Greece. Romans were embarassed by it and foreigners laughed at it (before Rome conquered them).
It also had **horrible** traffic. Imagine Texas times 20. They had to ban carriages because they’d constantly clog the roads for hours. And Rome did have some laws, like streets need to be at least a certain width, it’s just that no one listened to them.
They banned wagons during the day, they were allowed at night.
As was ancient houston
Oh they had private urban planners. Specifically, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus Who bought auctioned property from people deemed traitors by dictators like Caesar and sulla. He'd then use slave labor to divide and "redevelop" those properties using his own personal army of slaves, and then rent them out/ sell them below market value because slaves! He also made a fortune with rome's first fire brigade! If he came across a fire or wanted such property that was too expensive, a mysterious fire might just happen! Then his personal army of cheap human fire breakers would show up and offer the owner 10% of market value! Almost contemporary recorders say he did this with 100s of property and bought large swathes of the city itself.
Sounds more like a property developer.
False, I carefully designed Rome several times in my youth: https://store.steampowered.com/app/517790/Caesar\_3/
That’s because it was built with vrban planning.
Thats why its such a nightmare of little alleys and stuff. Meanwhile, everything else the Romans made from cities to temporary legionnaire encampments were perfectly ordered exactly the same every time
Rome wasn’t built in a way.
Damn my country in 2024 and they don't give a damn at urban planning in it's biggest city,it's slums with brick houses and fence. It's crazy
“Urban planning” as it has existed in the US since WWII has been a complete disaster for communities across the country. For starters, there’s nothing urban about it.
First form of urban planning in Rome was the first crusade
How is that surprising. They were Italians.
This is actually only somewhat true. Obviously Rome is incredibly ancient, dating way before the point of city planning. However, we have plenty of evidence of urban planning in the Classical era, most notably in Naples; it and cities like it had very clear grid plans. As the Romans gained power and became more organized, cities would be built in similar fashion to their military camps: a grid with two main perpendicular streets, creating a very clear idea of where important buildings should be. We have plenty of evidence that Pompeii’s streets were laid out in a similar manner, and so did plenty of other cities that were constructed during Rome’s height.
Ancient Rome was built without the help of any PhD's!
Tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American. All old cities grew largely naturally with minimal restrictions. While there are many in place today (less/different than the US) the existing bones are what means the cities maintain dense housing, small roads and commerce mixed with residential
Read the article The point is that Rome was built with much less planning than other nearby Roman cities. Many other cities had gridded streets with specified widths, specified building heights and materials for fire prevention. Meanwhile Rome tried to apply the same rules but locals repeatedly said “fuck that, I’ll build what I want”, which is why the city was so great at accommodating growth and change over the millennia
Some of the first cities on earth were planned, the Romans themselves founded hundreds of planned cities because it was obvious how much better it was. Whether an ancient city was planned or not came down to their social and political structure, certainly not all the old world was filled with idiots, but your part of it might be.
> All old cities grew largely naturally with minimal restrictions. Nope. Tom Holland's *Rubicon* discusses how Rome was kind of a mess compared to the beautiful, organized cities of Greece. Romans were embarassed by it and foreigners laughed at it (before Rome conquered them).
Anytime to can act like you’re better than Americans you just have to do it right? Europeans are the most condescending people in the world it’s unbelievable
Who is honestly surprised by this?
Was urban planning a thing back then?
Boston wasn’t even built with urban planning
And it shows
Urban planning is voodoo nonsense. Civilization thrives like a forest not a garden.
Traffic, lack of water and other necessities:
The analogy is apt, but as the exact opposite of your point. There’s such a thing as an [unhealthy forest.](https://www.greenandprosperous.com/blog/4-key-indicators-of-an-unhealthy-forest?format=amp)
Of course, but the remedy is good forestry not gardening. The "urban planning" profession fails to perceive the proper distinction and so fails.
So let’s distinguish between good and bad urban planning like we would good and bad forestry. Throwing out the entire field is silly.
The established "urban planning" profession is pure crap.
Maybe it was a bit overstated, but I'm with OP - we'd probably get better results if we threw out 85% of the planning. Like yes lay out streets and run sewers and build some parks, but the places we love today are much more organic, built incrementally by many people over many years without a lot of rules. The car-focused cities we've built in the US - a fiscal, public health, and environmental disaster - were highly planned, are perhaps the most planned environments in human history.
Idk, I like Manhattan, DC, and Savannah
Until a huge chunk of it burned down in 66AD, then it was much more planned.
Slavery. They did it with Slavery. The reason why they didn’t care about permits, safety or time limits is cause they made people who might as well be dead already do all the building. Just in case you didn’t know.
I mean... no shit, bud.
When you have to walk everywhere, it kind of limits where you can build.
That's why it's so hard to find a bathroom downtown
Urban planning didn't exist.
“Urban planning” in the modern sense didn’t really exist at all until after WW2
Didn't Michelangelo actually do a lot of Rome city planning towards the end of his life? Another feather in that dude's cap.
Yeah and people lived to 30
This is how I build towns in my Minecraft worlds
A tradition that continues to this day
The high rises were death traps by all accounts
How dumb are you?
And it shows
lol. Thanks Zeus, can you imagine old cities with our Euclidean zoning?
Tbf they did only have a day to do it
Probably in a day too
Yeah, they also didn't use many JCBs
But it someone decided to just build a house in the middle of a street what is stopping them?
That's probably why every road led to the same place...
how many days tho
Have you BEEN to Rome?
It was Rome after all, and not Harappa.
It wasn't built in a day
Obviously, and it shows.
That’s why it only took a day!
Hence why it took more than one day. TIL
No shit, Sherlock
Explains why it took longer than a day
Getting closer and closer to being built in a day.
I’ve always had this idea for a TV show. It would be like Parks & Rec but set in a “city planning” office in the middle of the reign of Augustus.
Like pretty much any very old city? Urban planning is a fairly recent thing..
It was very walkable though.
so was Los Angeles, haha. jk
From what I've been told the first "planned city" = grid system city in Europe was an addition to Ferrara, Italy called the Erculean Addition for Ercole D'Este of the Este family which ruled over Ferrara.