How the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 Shaped New York City PDF

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"How the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 Shaped New York City" essay...

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HNRS 2/15/17 How the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 Shaped New York City Cities, experienced without any historical context, tend to give off the illusion of permanence and logic. We tend to assume that the way cities are and the way they should be are one and the same. Thus, the order and organization of our most complex and artificial environments manage to avoid scrutiny or criticism. Yet in some academic circles, especially economics, the interconnectedness of geography and institution quality in determining economic outcomes has been a point of contentious debate (McArthur et al 2001; Rodrik et al 2004).

Infrastructure can have serious (if effectively invisible) effects on social, economic and political outcomes. Urban grids, specifically, have been the subject of significant scholarly attention throughout various disciplines (Hurd 1905; Stanislawski 1946; Kostof 1991; Reps 1992; Conzen 2001). Decentralized demarcation systems allow boundaries to be spatially customized by landowners to geography, personal preferences and localized knowledge. The usage of centralized grids despite upfront planning costs and restrictive lack of flexibility suggests that the system has implicit long-term benefits outweighing the costs and delays entailed.

Perhaps no urban grid is more iconic or historically significant as that of New York City, although it was not the first. Laid out in the ambitious and forward-thinking Commissioner's Plan of 1811, the grid was meant to facilitate the "orderly division, sale, and development of land in Manhattan between Fourteenth Street and Washington Heights" (Lindner 2014). Although certain sections were altered due to subsequent developments such as Central Park, Columbia Univer-

sity, and Lincoln Center, the cultural and financial capital of the world retains most of the grid over two centuries later.

The art historian Rosalind Krauss argues in her seminal essay “Grids” that the abstract form of the grid is “an emblem of modernity” and that “it is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature" (Krauss 1979). A similar modernist idealism is often attributed as one of the main motivations of Morris, Rutherfurd, and De Witt. However, according to legal historian Hendrick Hartog, the grid was "... the antithesis of a utopian or futuristic plan" (Hartog 1983). Although indisputably forward-thinking, the Commissioners were not motivated by any utopian ideals, but rather aligned themselves with the political values of their young, recently independent country. The grid, in their view, would democratize land ownership and development - reflecting their belief that "government ought not to act in such a way as to create inequality of special privilege." This effectively served "to transform space into an expression of public philosophy" emphasizing equality and uniformity.

These egalitarian ideals have often been the subject of praise. The Museum of the City of New York's recent exhibition "The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan for Manhattan" certainly seems to indicate a a favorable opinion of the grid; it is not only great, but the greatest. What, then, have been the positive effects of this great grid? How can we measure the efficacy and fairness of an urban layout plan? Just how great is the grid?

In a 2014 paper, Harvard postdoctoral research fellow Trevor O'Grady discusses the small- and large-scale coordination issues that arise in decentralized demarcation systems, such

as the divergent interests that arise when landowners negotiate boundary lines. While a purely capitalist society may condone such activities and prefer that both parties negotiate until reaching a mutually beneficial conclusion, this coordination can be difficult and unfairly advantageous to a single party with more extensive resources. These divergent interests can also manifest on larger scales, leading to "haphazard transportation routes, awkwardly shaped lots, idiosyncratic property definitions, and costly addressing systems that require local knowledge to be useful" (Kostof 1991; Linklater 2003).

O'Grady argues that "These issues suggest that constraints on individual demarcation choices can improve welfare by increasing gains from coordination across land holdings. The basic mechanism of centralized systems is to establish a preemptive demarcation structure that is costly to deviate from and reorganize". It seems that a centralized grid structure can benefits all of a city's inhabitants by standardizing infrastructure and utilities, leading to greater efficiency and order. The grid benefits middle-class landowners who would otherwise fall prey to wealthier landowners in a decentralized, capitalist division of land. The poor and non-land-owning residents likewise benefit from the efficient transport and trade facilitated by a grid system. O'Grady points out that "even in the absence of coordinated demarcation, there is a tendency toward rectangular lots in urban areas", implying that there are inherent benefits to rectangular property lots. They are simple to understand and recognize, reduce transaction costs, and in densely populated areas lead to rectangular construction forms which are thought to be conducive to structural integrity (Stanislawski 1946).

Despite recurring complaints regarding the numbing regularity of the Commissioners’ Plan, the grid system actually worked very well for a century. The majority of movement took place laterally east to west as carts and wagons went to and from river piers that served as the city’s primary entry and exit points. The Commissioner’s Plan served this purpose very well, laying out many east-west streets to facilitate this movement. The advent of the automobile, however, made the grid plan somewhat of anachronism. Gasoline-powered vehicles, and the bridges and tunnels providing them mass access, began to shift the primary orientation of island traffic from east-west to north-south. The widely spaced north-south avenues became a major inconvenience and led to heavy congestion, high parking prices and hefty traffic penalties. Joseph Francois Mangin’s rejected plan, which would ultimately lead to the Commissioner’s Plan, may have ultimately avoided these issues by providing for more routes along the north-south axis. The permanence of the grid seems to be its key weakness, as the Commissioner’s grid was quite useful for a century and is now a major nuisance. It would be all but impossible to alter it to more closely resemble Mangin’s plan, and thus the once-futuristic Commissioner’s Plan now seems staid and outdated.

This, however, is an oversight of execution, not theory. It is difficult to see how New York would have become the success story that it has without the centralized institutional structure of uniform rectangular grids reducing the frictions and hindrances of land development and division. O’Grady calculates that New York’s building density has 9 to 18 percent more coverage due to the grid, and as much as 54 percent more coverage in certain areas. This likely reflects “an increased willingness of landowners to invest capital in gridded parcels”. O’Grady also calculates that the centralized grid effect increases land values by about 20 percent, which is more or

less consistent with the historical effect in the early 19th century. The grid also “makes a complex place instantly navigable” (Kimmelman 2012), which is not trivial. New York City attracts over 50 million foreign and American tourists each year, pulling in 45 billion dollars in 2015. Any visitor can quickly grasp the layout and, in a sense, feel they immediately possess the city. “By contrast, an American can live for half a century in Rome or Hamburg or Copenhagen or Tokyo but never become Italian or German or Danish or Japanese. Anybody can become a New Yorker.” Thus, the grid gave rise to New York’s most characteristic property: that of being a democratic melting-pot.

Perhaps what the Museum of the City of New York intended to say is that New York City is great. This is a difficult assertion to disagree with, regardless of political leanings or economic beliefs. New York City has been a fascinating experiment and a testament to the capabilities of our species. The grid, whether it helped or hindered the city’s tremendous growth and diversity, certainly played an instrumental role in shaping what the greatest city in the world has become.

References

Ellickson R C (2013) "The Law and Economics of Street Layouts: How a Grid Pattern Benefits a Downtown" Yale Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 4807 Higgins H (2009). The Grid Book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Kimmelman M. The New York Times (2012) The grid at 200: lines that shaped Manhattan. 2 January Krauss R (1979) Grids. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Vol. 9 Lindner C. (2015) Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism, and the Visual Arts, 18901940. Oxford: Oxford U Press McArthur J. W., Sachs J.D. (2001) Institutions and geography: Comment on Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson. National Bureau of Economic Research No. 8114 Muth R. (1969) Cities and Housing; The Spatial Pattern of Urban Residential Land. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. O’Grady T (2014) “Spatial Institutions in Urban Economies: How City Grids Affect Density and Development” Unpublished thesis, Harvard University Rodrik D, Subramanian A, and Trebbi F (2004) Institutions rule: the primacy of institutions over geography and integration in economic development. Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 9: 131165 Stanislawski D (1946) The origin and spread of the grid-pattern town. Geographical Review Vol. 36, No. 1: 105-120...