Ohio certainly has a rich planning history that emerges when studying American Planning History. I thought assembling a comprehensive list could be fun, so here is a start:

 

Ingalls Building, Cincinnati - First reinforced-concrete skyscraper (1903)

 

Group Plan - Daniel Burnham-designed mall for Downtown Cleveland (1903)

 

Mariemont - John Nolan-designed Garden City (1923)

 

First Comprehensive Plan - Prepared for Cincinnati (1925)

 

Euclid v. Ambler Realty - Supreme Court case upholding constitutionality of zoning (1926)

 

Grandview Avenue Shopping Center, Grandview Heights - One of first and a national model for the auto-accessible shopping center (1928)

 

Greenhills - One of only three New Deal Greenbelt towns (1935)

 

Town and Country Shopping Center, Whitehall - First regional shopping center (1948)

 

Advocacy Planning - Cleveland shifts from traditional land use planning to advocacy planning (1975)

 

Dayton Plan - Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission plan to dispurse low-income housing throughout region (1973)

 

National Conference on Planning History - First ever held in Columbus (1986)

 

Five Oaks, Dayton - First implementation of defensible space on neighborhood-scale (1992)

 

 

  Miami Conservancy District - Flood protection for Dayton and other Great Miami River cities after the 1913 flood. Miami Conservancy District was the model for the TVA and Army Corps of Engineers Flood Control Works.

 

  Glendale - first platted curved streets in America (also claimed by a neighborhood in Boston)

 

    Rectangular Land Survey System - conceived in Ireland and other places, perfected in Ohio, used for the rest of the United States west of Ohio, also Canada, Australia, and South Africa

 

   

I believe Perrysburg was the second federally-planned city, after Washington DC.

Awesome thread.

Shaker Square, first out door mall in America.

Actually, that's Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, but Shaker Square was one of the first.

Euclidean Zoning isn't something I'd be especially proud of since it's increasingly coming under criticism for being outdated and inflexible.

The 1907 Kessler Park Plan for Cincinnati, Ink? Don't know much about it but the Kessler map shows a lot of old Cincinnati streets before later 20th Century development. Maybe you could fill in a few details?

Cincinnati had to be one of the first cities to impose an urban grid across river topography. They did it in the late 1700s. They didn't even start on Manhattan until 1811.

All the more reason why Ohio should make an even more pro-active attempt in these times to futher emphasize and strengthen their planning sectors. An economic climate when little is being built is a perfect time to plan for the future.

 

Yeah but when 80% of people in that field are out of planning related work, the enthusiasm drops drastically lol

 

Okay, maybe it's not as high as 80% here; I'm thinking of the Southwest.

^The job market for urban planning is that bad? That sounds like journalism or television/film/music production. I didn't think those kinds of numbers were possible in fields that didn't have an endless stream of unpaid interns.

 

It's terrible; even in the public sector.

 

Actually, that's Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, but Shaker Square was one of the first.

 

I stand corrected, you are right.  They beat us by 4 years (1923-1927)

^The job market for urban planning is that bad? That sounds like journalism or television/film/music production. I didn't think those kinds of numbers were possible in fields that didn't have an endless stream of unpaid interns.

 

Oh, it does, and also don't forget the planning studios that colleges do.  There are also Americorps/VISTA volunteers to contend with.

^---"Cincinnati had to be one of the first cities to impose an urban grid across river topography"

 

  Sorry, Cincinnati's street grid is modeled after Philidelphia's.  Oxford, Ohio was modeled after Philidelphia to the point of having the same street names (Some of the names have since changed.)

 

  For what it's worth the Cincinnati skywalk concept was copied by a lot of other cities.

^---"Cincinnati had to be one of the first cities to impose an urban grid across river topography"

 

  Sorry, Cincinnati's street grid is modeled after Philidelphia's.

 

No need to apologize.

That Cincinnati's grid was based on Philadelphia's is an oft-repeated error.  The only similarity is that they both use tree names and the major north-south streets tend to be 400ft apart.

 

Aside from that, the two grids are as different as grids can be. Philadelphia has two dominant streets that converge at a center square.  These are wider than any street in Cincinnati aside from Central Parkway and the other streets tend to be narrower. Cincinnati has no center square and Main St. is no wider than the rest.  Broadway is for about two blocks. The rest of Cincinnati's streets are 66ft. wide. 

 

Philadelphia's center square isn't even a square.  Center City very well might have zero square blocks.  Cincinnati has a few dozen square blocks below 8th St., but north of there chaos ensues and resembles Philadelphia only in that the block sizes are random. 

 

All of this is easily proven with a cursory glance at satellite imagery.  It's possible that this myth was able to fester mostly because of the lack of instantly accessible satellite imagery. 

 

The street grid as a planning tool goes back to at least the Renaissance and picked up special force with Descartes and the spread of the Cartesian plane as a way of understanding space (what is a street grid or the township grid if not a Cartesian plane laid over the earth - all rational and Enlightenment style).

 

Cincinnati claim to fame is that the grid of the city is 2D even as the land became 3D, which is why the streets heading toward the Mt. Auburn do not especially follow the lay of the land, but rather go in seemingly irrational angles to the earth.

The ancient Greeks used the grid for planning many of their later colonies or rebuilding cities destroyed by war.  It is usually attributed to a man named Hippadomus, though it is probably older.  The Romans also used a grid, with a main N-S and E-W street.

great thread

I was thinking the Miami Valley Conservancy District (watershed-based flood control system) would be a first, except I think this might be more engineering than planning.

 

  Ok, please allow me to re-phrase this.

 

  Cincinnati's street layout was not directly copied off of Philidelphia. What was copied was a rational, rectangular grid system of blocks and lots in a general way, as opposed to a random system that grew organically.

 

    Philidelphia was not the first city to use a grid system, but it is notable for the fact that it was laid out to a high degree of precision, and it was much larger than it needed to be at the time that it was laid out. In fact, it took nearly 100 years for all of the lots in Philidelphia to be developed. The fact that Philidelphia was so large so early influenced a lot of other American cities.

 

 

The ancient Greeks used the grid for planning many of their later colonies or rebuilding cities destroyed by war.  It is usually attributed to a man named Hippadomus, though it is probably older.  The Romans also used a grid, with a main N-S and E-W street.

 

The Egyptians used it before the Greeks did.

Maybe we should note that when humans have planned cities - they use a grid, because 90 degree angles are easy. Exceptions obviously came along. The issue of course is that very cities in history developed in a truly planned fashion end up have a more organic structure.

The various cultures used grids for different reasons.  Some used it for religious purposes, in the US we used it to minimize litigation and encourage the purchase of lots sight unseen.  There was no stipulation in the platting of the township grids that towns needed to be platted as grids.  There was however the stipulation that the township grids be oriented to the cardinal directions.  The entire Symmes Purchase was illegally platted to magnetic north.  All the section line roads are tilted for this reason, like Clifton Ave. and McMillan St. in Cincinnati.  It's easy to see on Google maps.     

The downtown "Philadelphia" grid is oriented to the river, but the "West End" grid as well as the rest of the area in between the Miamis is oriented toward magnetic north.  If you look at at Hamilton, the area just south of downtown is magnetic north whereas the area across the river is true north.  Same thing in Dayton.  In both cases the old "town" grid is oriented toward the Great Miami, so you have to look about a mile out where the crooked township section lines can be traced. 

The various cultures used grids for different reasons.  Some used it for religious purposes, in the US we used it to minimize litigation and encourage the purchase of lots sight unseen.  There was no stipulation in the platting of the township grids that towns needed to be platted as grids.  There was however the stipulation that the township grids be oriented to the cardinal directions.  The entire Symmes Purchase was illegally platted to magnetic north.  All the section line roads are tilted for this reason, like Clifton Ave. and McMillan St. in Cincinnati.  It's easy to see on Google maps.     

 

The latter reincarnations of the grid seem to coincide with the rise of free-market forces and division of labour. There was little to no hierarchy in how space was used (churches and public buildings aren't on high-ground at a termination or edge or given more generous sized lots - things like that). The grid is the epitome of secular space. The space is neutral.

 

The funny thing about Cincinnati is that the streets downtown are perfectly alligned with the streets in NKY as if the river was added later. Manhattan and Brooklyn don't have that kind of relationship and it's hilarious because culturally, Cincinnatians and Kentuckians don't mesh (or at least they don't like to think they do).

 

The various cultures used grids for different reasons.

 

Yeah that's what I meant but also that in different time periods they were inspired for different reasons.