Farms Of Long Ago

I glanced at a map of Niagara Falls, NY, and something caught my attention. In the eastern half of the city, known as LaSalle, from around 47th Street to Cayuga Creek, the two main east-west roads, Buffalo Avenue and Niagara Falls Boulevard, are exactly one mile apart. This got me thinking about the beginning and expansion of cities.

All cities are, of course, sorrounded by the farms which provide them with food. When cities expand as the population increases, they should logically grow along a roughly circular front from the original settlement. This would result in main streets in a radial pattern from the center. This is often seen in the street plans of European cities and I notice that Buffalo, NY also has main streets going eastward in this radial pattern from the downtown area.

The logical shape for most farms is square or rectangular for the most efficient plowing, planting and, harvesting. The reason that few cities in North America display the radial street patterns that we would expect from a city which grew outward from an original settlement is due to the layout of farms. Instead of laying roads outward from the center as main roads as the city grows, the old farm roads, which often forms the boundaries between farms, are expanded into the main roads of the growing city.

This is why the grid pattern of streets is so prevalent in North America, not because of buildings but because of farms. This ends up making the city more efficient in terms of space, although less efficient in terms of movement. (To read further about this, you can see my posting "Social Engineering" on this blog). Isn't it amazing how the predominant farming techniques at the time of settlement determine the pattern of city streets generations later?

When you see a map of a city with a grid pattern of evenly spaced main roads, it is not because the city was planned this way. It is because these roads were once farm roads, until the city filled out into the sorrounding countryside and they were expanded to become the main roads of the city. This is why Niagara Falls Boulevard and Buffalo Avenue in Niagara Falls, NY, have a long stretch in which they are exactly one mile apart. They were once roads amongst the farms.

Canadian cities, in particular, display this pattern. In Niagara Falls, Canada, it is very easy to see on a map (http://www.maps.google.com/ or http://www.multimap.com/ ) the original city close to the river. Then, moving further from the river, the filled-in rectangles which were once farms and then, further out, unfilled grids of woodland and farms.

In Hamilton, it is plain to see in the grid of main roads that there are three different sizes of former farm plots that now make up the city. The blocks formed by the main roads are larger above the escarpment ("The Mountain" in local parlance) than below the escarpment, but get smaller further out above the escarpment.