Savannah's mysterious historic plan
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- 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...
Resources on this topic:
savannahurbanst...
Oglethorpe's Sources for the Savannah Plan, Bannister, 1961: www.jstor.org/s...
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.
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.
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.
@@sereysothe.anah it’s still walkable in midtown but south side and the islands are car dependent.
@@sereysothe.amidtown was late’s out in the 1800s and south side and the islands were in the 40s and 50s
@@mrbrainchild7637it’s still pretty walkable south of of forsyth park due to the 1800s early 1900s grid like suture the city perused when it expanded passed the squares. Sherman did Savannah a favour by not burning it down to the ground because he was impressed by the city
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.
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!
He had SimCity 2000 BC...
Gotta love these legos microphone-supporting pillars
Lmao yeah i noticed that too
Savannah is one of America’s greatest “hidden gems” and one of the comfiest places I’ve ever walked.
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!
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.
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'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!
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 was always wondering what made Savannah such a nice city to walk through. Thanks for making this video.
I guess a trip to Savannah is due at some point.
Check out Charleston, SC too
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.
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!
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.
One of my absolute favorite cities!
A really interesting channel- this is what TH-cam is for!
Thanks! This is my favorite video on this channel to date.
You do a great job. I enjoy these videos. Thank you
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.
Savannah is beautiful. This was fascinating.
It was aliens. He was inspired by aliens.
Finally, a channel that is smart and interesting too!! Thx!!
I like Savannah. Great video. Would be cool to use this plan to reinvent the urban center in most cities.
Walked through Savannah when I wlast visited. It was super walkable!
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!
I used to live on Pulaski square. It was beautiful
The squares were used for meetings and Forsythe Park was used for Miltia training drills to keep the public ready to defend the city.
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.
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.
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
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 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!
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.
He probably tested it out first in Cities: Skylines
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 👍
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.
As someone who has been to Savannah. I can say that it is truly a beautiful place!
Cool video! I love history mysteries!
Wow! I should visit this place!
I have also read speculation that he knew of the Peking (Beijing) urban plan.
Great town😀
Nicely presented video
Love my city ❤
The medieval plan was pretty much to fit as much as possible inside the walls.
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?
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.
It's a terrible shame this didn't become the norm in the Sun Belt. This reminds me of Barcelona's "megablocks".
My favorite city, besides Barcelona!
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.
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.
It’s a nice place to visit
I’m just gonna take this for my DnD map. Thanks for helping me out!
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.
So you're telling me Oglethorpe basically invented superblocks? Because that layout is incredibly similar to a lot of modern superblocks
You should look at New Town, Edinburgh. It has a similar innovative Enlightenment feel.
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.
proud Georgian🙋♂️
beautiful video. :D
Part2: Where does a youtuber get the inspiration to use Legos to raise up a microphone stand?
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.
Your mic stand is fantastic!
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)
Or maybe he just came up with the idea all on his own. Some people really do think outside of the box.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
nice job
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.
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.
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.
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?
Can you do the planning of Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) and Jaipur during the Mughal Empire of India ?
No big mystery, really. He saw the grid pattern mentioned several times, and made improvements, or adjusted them in a manner he thought was better. Savannah is not that far removed from some of the examples noted.
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).
so when was it done, and with wat population?
I love the LEGO mic stand platforms.
Savannah is a beautiful and Historical city. A great place to visit. Yet many natives there have mental problem. I do not recommend anyone moving there,It is a city of high crime rate.
So that's why southern rappers call each other wardeez. At least New Orleans rappers do.
Wards
On one of the numerous Savannah walking tours they said that the squares were used for execution purposes, like public hangings. They tell a story of a young woman who was hanged and until her last breathe she was screaming asking the whereabouts of her baby. Moments later a woman comes running into the group, grabs some guy, screams "where is my baby?", and runs off. Guy said her hands were ice cold. Pretty sure it was just part of the show.
Have you worked at Vox before?🤔 The style of video seems so familiar.
No, but I do love their videos!
Reminds the geddes plan a bit
That's the city I was born in
MAKE AMERICA SAVANNAH
He learned that shit on the internet like everybody else. Probably TH-cam.
Hi Callie, I posted the sources for this video in the description. And I even gave a shout out to the book at the end of the video!
We have it in Brunswick, GA as well - upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/CityofBrunswick1837.PNG
This so-called mystery is an entirely mundane question. The concept of repeating square-like patterns is hardly rocket science and given that it's really really really simple, is it even meaningful where the particular peculiarities derived their origin? We're talking about patterns So simple that they have probably been many times independently derived in a thousand bored city planning students' notebooks. N'est-ce pas?
Maybe he just really liked public squares?
Obviously he had the Internet and he watch this video
Maybe he winged it
👍🏾😎
maybe he played a lot of Cities Skylines?