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Article Excerpt
More than half a century has passed since Dan Stanislawski (1903-1997) published his landmark study in the Geographical Review on the geography of the grid settlement plan, "The Origin and Spread of the Grid-Pattern Town" (1946). In it, he attempted to trace the origin and diffusion of the grid plan from antiquity to the Spanish conquest of the "New World." The main assumption underlying Stanislawski's analysis was that the grid "may have been a one-time invention which has spread from its source region until it encompasses the globe" (p. 105). The search for the true "origin" of the grid led Stanislawski to the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro--in British India at the time of his writing, now in Pakistan--and he argued that all subsequent grid plans derived from the tradition of Indus Valley town planning in the third millennium B.C.E. The grid emerged from his analysis as a quasi-Platonic Ideal Form that became manifest through the continuity of tradition, and the scholar's task is to trace this continuity back to its original fountain of purity in order to decipher the inherent meaning of the grid.
It is important to bear in mind that Stanislawski was writing at a time when many geographers and other scholars were embracing the doctrine of diffusionism. This doctrine is based on the belief that cultural innovations generally spread or diffuse outward from a single source region rather than being independently invented in multiple locations. The debate over cultural diffusion and "single" versus "multiple" invention has a long history (Childe [1937] 1962; Jett and Carter 1966; Rowe 1966; Blaut 1977; 1987; 1993; Hugill and Dickson 1988), and Stanislawski's search for the origin of the grid is but one example of the diffusionist attempt to trace an innovation back to a single source. From this perspective, the origin holds the key to understanding the meaning of a cultural phenomenon or spatial form and is therefore of primary importance.
I argue in the current article that this privileging of the "origin" should be rejected as symptomatic of a metaphysics of essentialism based on the belief that "what stands at the beginning of all things is also what is most valuable and essential" (Nietzsche [1880] 1996, 302). The main point, as James Blaut rightly contended (1987), is not to deny that spatial diffusion occurs in many contexts. Rather, it is to call into question the essentialist assumptions that underpin diffusionism as a mythology of the "authentic origin." That is, even if we can determine that a particular innovation has a single source, we should not conclude that the origin itself is essential and that all subsequent adaptations are merely imperfect copies of an original Ideal Form. Instead, we should focus on understanding the particularities of how and why a given innovation was adopted within a specific historico-geographical context.
Such a critique also opposes the doctrinaire application of diffusionism, especially in cases where the evidence does not warrant such an explanation, a phenomenon Blaut (1987, 37) referred to as "phantom diffusion." Stanislawski's writings on the grid plan serve as a useful exemplar of the pitfalls associated with doctrinaire diffusionism. Yet Stanislawski was certainly not the only scholar to "succumb to diffusionism" (1987, 30); nor should we dismiss his contribution to geography on this basis alone. He was not unaware of the dangers of embracing speculative theories, although this might not be evident from the rhetorical tone of his writing on the grid. But, as Stanislawski himself noted in a different context, "it seems that a romantic theory can receive widespread acceptance, even though it is based on a total disregard of realities" (1976, 36). Few contemporary geographers or anthropologists would readily accept Stanislawski's conclusion that the grid was a "onetime invention." It is important, therefore, not to overstate his influence on current scholarship. Yet the purpose of critically engaging Stanislawski's theory of the grid's origin sixty years after its initial publication is to explicitly challenge the essentialism of the doctrinaire diffusionist's "model of the world" (Blaut 1993), which continues to shape geographical imaginations today.
Although research has broadened the scope of comparative historico-geographical analysis concerning orthogonally planned cities, few scholars have directly challenged Stanislawski's interpretation of the grid. Now, a decade after his death, a critical reassessment of Stanislawski's contribution to the historical geography of the grid plan is long overdue. I open this article with a summary of Stanislawski's general framework for explaining the grid pattern and examine the manner in which scholars have drawn upon and critiqued this approach. I then consider a number of theoretical perspectives that more recent scholars have developed to better understand the grid as a spatial form. Finally, I conclude by suggesting that geographical accounts of the grid should be situated within broader interdisciplinary discussions and genealogies of the grid.
STANISLAWSKI AND THE ORIGIN OF THE GRID
After completing his doctoral studies under the direction of Carl Sauer at the University of California-Berkeley, in 1944, Dan Stanislawski published his first article on the "origin" of the grid pattern as a form of urban settlement (1946). The article quickly drew the attention not only of geographers but also of architectural historians and other scholars (for example, Kubler [1948] 1972), and it has become a standard reference for works that examine the grid pattern.
During the early 1960s Stanislawski's study of the grid was reprinted in two important anthologies: George Theodorson's Studies in Human Ecology (1961) and Philip Wagner and Marvin Mikesell's Readings in Cultural Geography (1962). The former uncritically praised Stanislawski's contribution to understanding "a basic factor in the ecological structure of most American cities" (1961, 133), whereas the editors of the latter were more cautious about fully endorsing Stanislawski's conclusions: "As new archeological evidence is exposed, some features of [Stanislawski's] ... reconstruction may have to be changed, but revision or refinement will also have to be based on analysis of form and function through time" (1962, 207). As a reference that contradicted Stanislawski's diffusionist model, they called on George Foster's suggestion that the use of the grid plan in the Spanish colonial towns of the Americas should be seen "not [as] the diffusion of a material trait, but the utilization of an idea in a new context, with specific goals in mind" (Foster 1960, 49; see also Wagner and Mikesell 1962, 207). Others have also questioned the need to search for the "origin" of the grid plan (Pattison 1957; Johnson 1976; Low 1993, 1995, 2000). Yet, as recently as 1998, Stanislawski's study of the grid was described by one geographer as "a masterful treatment of questions of origin and diffusion of innovation, of independent invention versus borrowing" (Pederson 1998, 700). What exactly did this "masterful treatment" entail?
Stanislawski began by explaining how his interest in the origin of the grid plan initially developed from his regional studies of Spanish colonial settlement patterns in the Americas. His investigations of Spanish colonial towns compelled him to consider when, where, and why the grid plan originated and how it eventually "spread from its source region." As I noted above, Stanislawski suggested that the grid plan was likely a "one-time invention" that later diffused across the world (1946, 105). He then proceeded to elaborate on and justify such a diffusionist approach to studying the grid-pattern town.
Before examining the precise geographical location of the grid's "source region," Stanislawski weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the grid plan. He skipped rather quickly through the disadvantages, clearly viewing the benefits as a "superior list" (1946, 106). Those criticisms of the grid included its lack of accommodation to local topography, the conformity of building alignment imposed on individual property owners, and the greater efficiencies of the radial plan with respect to "communication from the periphery to the center" (p. 106). In terms of the grid's advantages, he emphasized that the plan was ideal for the "equitable distribution of property" by virtue of its "efficient use of space," yet it...
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