The Syntax of City Space: American Urban Grids

by Mark David Major

Many people see American cities as a radical departure in the history of town planning because of their planned nature based on the geometrical division of the land. However, other cities of the world also began as planned towns with geometric layouts so American cities are not unique. Why did the regular grid come to so pervasively characterize American urbanism? Are American cities really so different?The Syntax of City American Urban Grids by Mark David Major with Foreword by Ruth Conroy Dalton (co-editor of Take One Building ) answers these questions and much more by exploring the urban morphology of American cities. It argues American cities do represent a radical departure in the history of town planning while, simultaneously, still being subject to the same processes linking the street network and function found in other types of cities around the world. A historical preference for regularity in town planning had a profound influence on American urbanism, which endures to this day.

244 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 14, 2018

About the author

Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-a is an author, artist, entrepreneur, architect and urban planner with extensive experience in academia, business, real estate, urban planning, and design in the USA and Europe. He is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Abu Dhabi University in the UAE. He is the author and playwright of several fiction and non-fiction titles including: Mars Rising (science fiction), The Persistence of Memory and Other Plays (theatre), Everyday Objects: Collected Poems, 1987-2012 (poetry), An Infinitesimal Abundance of Color and An Excessive Abundance of Curls (children’s books with Layce Boswell).

He has been published in several different venues, including academia, professional journals, newspapers, and poetry magazines for more than twenty years. His poem ‘Purchased Inertia’ appeared in the February 2011 issue of The View From Here Magazine. His poems also appeared in the anthologies On the Wings of Pegasus, Patterns of Life, Visions, Whispers, and the German e-journal, Poems Niederngasse. He is a member of the Poetry Society of America and the Association of Independent Authors.