His conquests were a step in the propagation of the grid plan throughout colonies, some as far-flung as Taxila in Pakistan, that would later be mirrored by the expansion of the Roman Empire.

The concept of a grid as the ideal method of town planning had become widely accepted by the time of Alexander the Great. However, it slowly gained primacy through the work of Hippodamus of Miletus (498 – 408 BC), who planned and replanned many Greek cities in accordance with this form. Ancient Greece Īlthough the idea of the grid was present in Hellenic societal and city planning, it was not pervasive prior to the 5th century BC. The archetypal Roman Grid was introduced to Italy first by the Greeks, with such information transferred by way of trade and conquest. Perhaps the most well-known grid system is that spread through the colonies of the Roman Empire. The city's grid covered 21 square kilometres(8 square miles). Teotihuacan, near modern-day Mexico City, is the largest ancient grid-plan site in the Americas. And for its layout the city should have the Royal Court situated in the south, the Marketplace in the north, the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the east and the Altar to the Gods of Land and Grain in the west.' Three gates on each side of the perimeter lead into the nine main streets that crisscross the city and define its grid-pattern. Guidelines put into written form in the Kaogongji during the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC) stated: 'a capital city should be square on plan.

The tradition of grid plans is continuous in China from the 15th century BC onward in the traditional urban planning of various ancient Chinese states. The streets of Babylon were wide and straight, intersected approximately at right angles, and were paved with bricks and bitumen. Hammurabi king of the Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC, ordered the rebuilding of Babylon: constructing and restoring temples, city walls, public buildings, and irrigation canals. Many pyramid-cult cities used a common orientation: a north–south axis from the royal palace and an east–west axis from the temple, meeting at a central plaza where King and God merged and crossed. Ī workers' village (2570–2500 BC) at Giza, Egypt, housed a rotating labor force and was laid out in blocks of long galleries separated by streets in a formal grid.

The cities and monasteries of Sirkap, Taxila and Thimi (in the Indus and Kathmandu Valleys), dating from the 1st millennium BC to the 11th century AD, also had grid-based designs. Each block was subdivided by small lanes. The grid plan of Miletus in the Classical periodīy 2600 BC, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, major cities of the Indus Valley civilization, were built with blocks divided by a grid of straight streets, running north–south and east–west.

Grid city map d20