In urban planning , the grid plan , grid street plan , or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid .
127-645: Glenelg North is a seaside suburb of Adelaide , South Australia . It is located in both the City of Holdfast Bay and the City of West Torrens . The 2011 Census by the Australian Bureau of Statistics counted 5,699 persons in Glenelg North on census night. Of these, 50.7% were male and 49.3% were female. The majority of residents (72.9%) are of Australian birth, with the other common census response being England (7.6%). The age distribution of Glenelg North residents
254-558: A concrete slab foundation , lined with Gyprock , and with an outer skin of brickwork, to cope with Adelaide's reactive soils , particularly Keswick Clay, black earth and some red-brown earth soils. The use of precast concrete panels for floor and wall construction has also increased. In addition to this, a significant factor in Adelaide's suburban history is the role of the South Australian Housing Trust . Adelaide has
381-474: A noise wall or a security gate —is completely separated from the road network except for one or two connections to arterial roads. In a way, this is a return to medieval styles: as noted in Spiro Kostof 's seminal history of urban design , The City Shaped , there is a strong resemblance between the street arrangements of modern American suburbs and those of medieval Arab and Moorish cities. In each case,
508-547: A 20th-century motor city. The Mannum–Adelaide pipeline brought River Murray water to Adelaide in 1955 and an airport opened at West Beach in 1955. Flinders University and the Flinders Medical Centre were established in the 1960s at Bedford Park, south of the city. Today, Flinders Medical Centre is one of the largest teaching hospitals in South Australia. In the post-war years around the early 1960s, Adelaide
635-402: A 39% reduction. Simultaneously, block lengths increase from 200 × 200 feet to 1240 × 200 feet. When all five blocks have reached the ultimate size of 1,240 feet (380 m) four street lengths out of total eight have been eliminated. Block lengths of 1,000 feet (300 m) or larger rarely appear in grid plans and are not recommended as they hinder pedestrian movement (Pedestrianism, below). From
762-523: A Spanish civil engineer, defined a concept of urban planning, based on the grid, that he applied to the Eixample of Barcelona . The Eixample grid introduced innovative design elements which were exceptional at the time and even unique among subsequent grid plans: These innovations he based on functional grounds: the block size, to enable the creation of a quiet interior open space (60 m by 60 m) and allow ample sunlight and ventilation to its perimeter buildings;
889-499: A complex social structure including a class of sorcerers separated from regular society. Within a few decades of European settlement of South Australia , Kaurna culture was almost completely destroyed. The last speaker of Kaurna language died in 1929. Extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both, which has included a commitment by local and state governments to rename or include Kaurna names for many local places. Based on
1016-536: A direct route. While the imposition of only one town form regardless of region could be seen as an imposition of imperial authority, there is no doubting the practical reasoning behind the formation of the Roman grid. Under Roman guidance, the grid was designed for efficiency and interchangeability, both facilitated by and aiding the expansion of their empire. As Japan and the Korean peninsula became politically centralized in
1143-455: A few hundred settlers, became the nucleus for what is now a city of over 5 million people, the city of Melbourne. The unusual dimensions of the allotments and the incorporation of narrow 'little' streets were the result of compromise between Hoddle's desire to employ the regulations established in 1829 by previous New South Wales Governor Ralph Darling, requiring square blocks and wide, spacious streets and Bourke's desire for rear access ways (now
1270-629: A formal grid. Many pyramid-cult cities used a common orientation: a north–south axis from the royal palace and an east–west axis from the temple, meeting at a central plaza where King and God merged and crossed. Hammurabi king of the Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC, ordered the rebuilding of Babylon : constructing and restoring temples, city walls, public buildings, and irrigation canals. The streets of Babylon were wide and straight, intersected approximately at right angles, and were paved with bricks and bitumen . The tradition of grid plans
1397-598: A grid as the ideal method of town planning had become widely accepted by the time of Alexander the Great. His conquests were a step in the propagation of the grid plan throughout colonies, some as far-flung as Taxila in Pakistan, that would later be mirrored by the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Greek grid had its streets aligned roughly in relation to the cardinal points and generally looked to take advantage of visual cues based on
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#17328523053411524-498: A grid of straight streets, running north–south and east–west. Each block was subdivided by small lanes. The cities and monasteries of Sirkap , Taxila and Thimi (in the Indus and Kathmandu Valleys ), dating from the 1st millennium BC to the 11th century AD, also had grid-based designs. A workers' village (2570–2500 BC) at Giza , Egypt , housed a rotating labor force and was laid out in blocks of long galleries separated by streets in
1651-646: A hectic era of land booms and tumultuous expansionism. Financial institutions in Melbourne and banks in Sydney closed. The national fertility rate fell and immigration was reduced to a trickle. The value of South Australia's exports nearly halved. Drought and poor harvests from 1884 compounded the problems, with some families leaving for Western Australia. Adelaide was not as badly hit as the larger gold-rush cities of Sydney and Melbourne, and silver and lead discoveries at Broken Hill provided some relief. Only one year of deficit
1778-487: A hot-summer Mediterranean climate ( Csa ) under the Köppen climate classification . The city has hot, dry summers and cool winters with moderate rainfall. Most precipitation falls in the winter months, leading to the suggestion that the climate be classified as a "cold monsoon". Rainfall is unreliable, light and infrequent throughout summer, although heavy falls can occur. The winter has fairly reliable rainfall with June being
1905-532: A layout. New Haven Colony , one of the earliest colonies in America, was designed with a tiny 9-square grid at its founding in 1638. On a grander scale, Philadelphia was designed on a rectilinear street grid in 1682, one of the first cities in North America to use a grid system. At the urging of city founder William Penn , surveyor Thomas Holme designed a system of wide streets intersecting at right angles between
2032-405: A result, street frequency drops and so does the total street length and, therefore, the cost. In general, it is not the street pattern per se that affects costs but the frequency of streets that it either necessitates or purposely incorporates. An inherent advantage of the orthogonal geometry of a proper grid is its tendency to yield regular lots in well-packed sequences. This maximizes the use of
2159-468: A series of streets named after trees or plants, running northward alphabetically from Ash to Walnut. As in many cities, some of these streets have been given new names violating the system (the former D Street is now Broadway, the former 12th Avenue is now Park Boulevard, etc.); this has meant that 2nd, not 1st, is the most common street name in the United States. An exception to the typical, uniform grid
2286-522: A significant increase in the state government's spending on Adelaide's infrastructure occurred. The Rann government invested A$ 535 million in a major upgrade of the Adelaide Oval to enable Australian Football League to be played in the city centre and more than A$ 2 billion to build a new Royal Adelaide Hospital on land adjacent to the Adelaide Railway Station. The Glenelg tramline
2413-554: A substantial majority of the South Australian House of Assembly. Of the 47 seats in the chamber, 34 seats (three-quarters of the legislature) are based in Adelaide, and two rural seats include Adelaide suburbs. The Adelaide metropolitan area is divided between nineteen local government areas . At its centre, the City of Adelaide administers the Adelaide city centre , North Adelaide , and the surrounding Adelaide Parklands . It
2540-745: A system which they spread around the Mediterranean and into northern Europe later on. The military expansion of this period facilitated the adoption of the grid form as standard: the Romans established castra (forts or camps) first as military centres; some of them developed into administrative hubs. The Roman grid was similar in form to the Greek version of a grid but allowed for practical considerations. For example, Roman castra were often sited on flat land, especially close to or on important nodes like river crossings or intersections of trade routes. The dimensions of
2667-639: A team of men to set out Adelaide, using various templates for city plans going back to Ancient Greece , including Italian Renaissance designs and the similar layouts of the American cities Philadelphia and Savannah –which, like Adelaide, follow the same layout of a central city square, four complementing city squares surrounding it and a parklands area that surrounds the city centre. The benefits of Light's design are numerous: Adelaide has had wide multi-lane roads from its beginning, an easily navigable cardinal direction grid layout and an expansive green ring around
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#17328523053412794-554: A total land area of 870 km (340 sq mi), while a more expansive definition by the Australian Bureau of Statistics defines a "Greater Adelaide" statistical area totalling 3,259.8 km (1,258.6 sq mi). The city sits at an average elevation of 50 metres (160 ft) above sea level. Mount Lofty , east of the Adelaide metropolitan region in the Adelaide Hills at an elevation of 727 metres (2,385 ft),
2921-457: Is 200 feet × 200 feet while Miletus' is half that size and Timgad's half again (see diagram). Houston, Sacramento and Barcelona are progressively bigger reaching up to four times the area of Portland's block. New York's 1811 plan (see above) has blocks of 200 feet (61 m). in width and variable lengths ranging from about 500 feet (150 m) to 900 feet (270 m) feet. The corresponding frequency of streets for each of these block sizes affects
3048-573: Is continuous in China from the 15th century BC onward in the traditional urban planning of various ancient Chinese states. Guidelines put into written form in the Kaogongji during the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC) stated: "a capital city should be square on plan. Three gates on each side of the perimeter lead into the nine main streets that crisscross the city and define its grid-pattern. And for its layout
3175-638: Is left to be found in reserves such as the Cleland National Park and Belair National Park . A number of creeks and rivers flow through the Adelaide region. The largest are the Torrens and Onkaparinga catchments. Adelaide relies on its many reservoirs for water supply with the Happy Valley Reservoir supplying around 40% and the much larger Mount Bold Reservoir 10% of Adelaide's domestic requirements respectively. Adelaide and its surrounding area
3302-683: Is north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, on the Adelaide Plains between the Gulf St Vincent and the low-lying Mount Lofty Ranges. The city stretches 20 km (12 mi) from the coast to the foothills, and 90 km (56 mi) from Gawler at its northern extent to Sellicks Beach in the south. According to the Regional Development Australia, an Australian government planning initiative, the "Adelaide Metropolitan Region" has
3429-540: Is not dependent on pattern configuration. As with the street width, any pattern can have wide or narrow pavements. Of all three factors that affect cost, street width, street length and pavement width, only street length is pattern dependent. An objective cost comparison would, therefore, rely on this variable with the full understanding that the other variables, though optional, can play a role. Traditional orthogonal grid patterns generally have greater street frequencies than discontinuous patterns. For example, Portland's block
3556-467: Is now the city of Marzabotto at the end of the 6th century BC. Its layout was based on Greek Ionic ideas, and it was here that the main east–west and north–south axes of a town (the decumanus maximus and cardo maximus respectively) could first be seen in Italy. According to Stanislawski (1946), the Romans did use grids until the time of the late Republic or early Empire, when they introduced centuriation ,
3683-493: Is now the suburb of Glenelg North . The event is commemorated in South Australia as Proclamation Day . The site of the colony's capital was surveyed and laid out by Colonel William Light , the first surveyor-general of South Australia, with his own original, unique, topographically sensitive design. The city was named after Queen Adelaide . Adelaide was established as a planned colony of free immigrants, promising civil liberties and freedom from religious persecution, based upon
3810-532: Is one of the most seismically active regions in Australia. On 1 March 1954 at 3:40 am Adelaide experienced its largest recorded earthquake to date, with the epicentre 12 km from the city centre at Darlington , and a reported magnitude of 5.6. There have been smaller earthquakes in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2022. The uplands of the Adelaide Hills , part of the southern Mount Lofty Ranges to
3937-593: Is skewed towards a slightly higher age bracket than the greater Australian population. 72.9% of residents were over 25 years in 2006, compared to the Australian average of 66.5%; and 27.1% were younger than 25 years, compared to the Australian average of 33.5%. The local newspaper is the Guardian Messenger . Other regional and national newspapers such as The Advertiser and The Australian are also available. St Leonards Primary School, located on Jervois Street,
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4064-610: Is that spread through the colonies of the Roman Empire. The archetypal Roman Grid was introduced to Italy first by the Greeks, with such information transferred by way of trade and conquest. Although the idea of the grid was present in Hellenic societal and city planning, it was not pervasive prior to the 5th century BC. However, it slowly gained primacy through the work of Hippodamus of Miletus (498–408 BC), who planned and replanned many Greek cities in accordance with this form. The concept of
4191-448: Is the capital and most populous city of South Australia , and the fifth-most populous city in Australia . The name "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills ) or the Adelaide city centre . The demonym Adelaidean is used to denote the city and the residents of Adelaide. The traditional owners of the Adelaide region are the Kaurna . The area of
4318-493: Is the local public school. Glenelg North is the site of the Patawalonga boat haven and The Old Gum Tree . It was home to a replica of the vessel HMS Buffalo , the ship that brought settlers to the state. The replica was fitted out as a restaurant. The Jetty Road shopping and dining precinct is a short walk from the suburb. There are parks and green spaces throughout Glenelg North. Glenelg North Beach extends along
4445-557: Is the oldest municipal authority in Australia and was established in 1840, when Adelaide and Australia's first mayor, James Hurtle Fisher , was elected. From 1919 onwards, the city has had a Lord Mayor , the current being Lord Mayor The Right Honourable Jane Lomax-Smith . Adelaide's inhabitants are known as Adelaideans. Grid plan Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogonal geometry, facilitate movement. The geometry helps with orientation and wayfinding and its frequent intersections with
4572-833: Is the plan of Savannah, Georgia (1733), known as the Oglethorpe Plan . It is a composite, cellular city block consisting of four large corner blocks, four small blocks in between and a public square in the centre; the entire composition of approximately ten acres (four hectares) is known as a ward. Its cellular structure includes all the primary land uses of a neighborhood and has for that reason been called fractal . Its street configuration presages modern traffic calming techniques applied to uniform grids where certain selected streets become discontinuous or narrow, thus discouraging through traffic. The configuration also represents an example of functional shared space , where pedestrian and vehicular traffic can safely and comfortably coexist. In
4699-467: Is the site of many governmental and financial institutions. Most of these are concentrated in the city centre along the cultural boulevards of North Terrace and King William Street . The area around modern-day Adelaide was originally inhabited by the Indigenous Kaurna people, one of many Aboriginal tribes in South Australia. The city and parklands area was known as Tarntanya, Tandanya, now
4826-475: Is the tallest point of the city and in the state south of Burra . The city borders the Temperate Grassland of South Australia in the east, an endangered vegetation community. Much of Adelaide was bushland before British settlement, with some variation – sandhills, swamps and marshlands were prevalent around the coast. The loss of the sandhills to urban development had a particularly destructive effect on
4953-581: The Adelaide city centre and a ring of parks, known as the Adelaide Parklands , surrounding it. Light's selection of the location for the city was initially unpopular with the early settlers, as well as South Australia's first governor, John Hindmarsh, due to its distance from the harbour at Port Adelaide, and the lack of fresh water there. Light successfully persisted with his choice of location against this initial opposition. Recent evidence suggests that Light worked closely with George Kingston as well as
5080-517: The Australian Space Agency being headquartered here. Adelaide's quality of life has ranked consistently highly in various measures through the 21st century, at one stage being named Australia's most liveable city, third in the world. Its aesthetic appeal has also been recognised by Architectural Digest , which ranked Adelaide as the most beautiful city in the world in 2024. As South Australia's government and commercial centre, Adelaide
5207-539: The New Zealand Company , the plans for Wellington , New Plymouth and Nelson . All of these towns were laid out on a grid plan, so it was easy to divide the land into acre plots of one chain by one furlong , 66 by 660 feet (20 by 201 m) (approximately 0.4 ha.), and these became known as town acres. Adelaide was divided into 1042 Town Acres. Maps showing the divisions of the town acres are available for Adelaide, Nelson, and Wellington. Ildefons Cerdà ,
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5334-538: The River Torrens . Two areas south ( the city centre ) and north ( North Adelaide ) of the river were laid out in grid pattern, with the city surrounded by the Adelaide Park Lands . Hoddle Grid is the name given to the layout of Melbourne , Victoria, named after the surveyor Robert Hoddle , who marked it out in 1837 establishing the first formal town plan. This grid of streets, laid out when there were only
5461-554: The SA Government announced plans for a network of transport-oriented developments across the Adelaide metropolitan area and purchased a 10 hectare industrial site at Bowden for $ 52.5 million as the first of these developments. Historically, Adelaide's suburban residential areas have been characterised by single-storey detached houses built on 1,000-square-metre ( 1 ⁄ 4 -acre) blocks. A relative lack of suitable, locally-available timber for construction purposes led to
5588-653: The Schuylkill River to the west and the Delaware River to the east, including five squares of dedicated parkland. Penn advertised this orderly design as a safeguard against overcrowding, fire, and disease, which plagued European cities. Holme drafted an ideal version of the grid, but alleyways sprouted within and between larger blocks as the city took shape. As the United States expanded westward, grid-based city planning modeled on Philadelphia's layout would become popular among frontier cities, making grids ubiquitous across
5715-1102: The Torrens Building in Victoria Square as the Adelaide campus for Carnegie Mellon University, University College London, and Torrens University; the Stock Exchange building as the Science Exchange of the Royal Institution Australia; and the Glenside Psychiatric Hospital as the Adelaide Studios of the SA Film Corporation . The government invested more than A$ 2 billion to build a desalination plant , powered by renewable energy, as an "insurance policy" against droughts affecting Adelaide's water supply . The Adelaide Festival , Fringe , and Womadelaide became annual events. Adelaide
5842-485: The castra were often standard, with each of its four walls generally having a length of 660 metres (2,150 ft). Familiarity was the aim of such standardisation: soldiers could be stationed anywhere around the Empire, and orientation would be easy within established towns if they had a standard layout. Each would have the aforementioned decumanus maximus and cardo maximus at its heart, and their intersection would form
5969-668: The lower house known as the House of Assembly and the upper house known as the Legislative Council . General elections are held every four years, the last being the 2022 South Australian state election . As Adelaide is South Australia's capital and most populous city, the State Government co-operates extensively with the City of Adelaide . In 2006, the Ministry for the City of Adelaide
6096-590: The " City of Churches " due to its diversity of faiths. The city has also been renowned for its automotive industry , as well as being the original host of the Australian Grand Prix in the FIA Formula One World Championship from 1985 to 1995. Today, Adelaide is known by its many festivals and sporting events, its food and wine , its coastline and hills, its large defence and manufacturing sectors, and its emerging space sector, including
6223-470: The '2-nd Line' on the eastern side, and the '3-rd Line' on the western side. After the reorganization of house numbering in 1834 and 1858 the even house numbers are used on the odd-numbered lines, and respectively odd house numbers are used for the even-numbered lines. The maximum numbers for 'lines' in Petersburg are 28-29th lines. Later in the middle of the 18th century another grid of rectangular blocks with
6350-411: The 'little' streets, for example Little Collins Street ). The city of Christchurch , New Zealand, was planned by Edward Jollie in 1850. The term "town acre" (often spelt with initial capital letters) may have originated with Edward Gibbon Wakefield who, in the 1830s, was involved in various schemes to promote the colonisation of South Australia and its capital, Adelaide , and, as founder of
6477-428: The 1960s. However, during the 1920s, the rapid adoption of the automobile caused a panic among urban planners , who, based on observation, claimed that speeding cars would eventually kill tens of thousands of small children per year. Apparently, at this early stage of the car's entry into the grid, the streets of major cities worldwide were the scene of virtual "slaughter" as the fatality rate in proportion to population
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#17328523053416604-570: The 1970s, deep red and brown bricks became popular. Until the 1970s, roofs tended to be clad with (painted) corrugated iron or cement or clay tiles, usually red "terracotta". Since then, Colorbond corrugated steel has dominated. Most roofs are pitched. Flat roofs are not common. Up to the 1970s, most houses were of "double brick" construction on concrete footings, with timber floors laid on joists supported by "dwarf walls". Later houses have mainly been of " brick veneer " construction – structural timber or, more recently, lightweight steel frame on
6731-500: The 7th century AD, those societies adopted Chinese grid-planning principles in numerous locations. In Korea, Gyeongju , the capital of Unified Silla , and Sanggyeong , the capital of Balhae , adapted the Tang dynasty Chinese model. The ancient capitals of Japan, such as Fujiwara-Kyô (AD 694–710), Nara (Heijô-Kyô, AD 710–784), and Kyoto (Heian-Kyô, AD 794–1868) also adapted from Tang's capital, Chang'an . However, for reasons of defense,
6858-566: The Americas were established according to this pattern, echoing the practices of earlier Indian civilizations. The baroque capital city of Malta , Valletta , dating back to the 16th century, was built following a rigid grid plan of uniformly designed houses, dotted with palaces, churches and squares. The grid plan became popular with the start of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. In 1606,
6985-503: The Australian states were established after the Murray River was successfully navigated in 1853 by Francis Cadell , an Adelaide resident. South Australia became a self-governing colony in 1856 with the ratification of a new constitution by the British parliament. Secret ballots were introduced, and a bicameral parliament was elected on 9 March 1857, by which time 109,917 people lived in
7112-633: The British Isles, the planned new town system involving a grid street layout was part of the system of burgage . An example of a medieval planned city in The Netherlands is Elburg . Bury St Edmunds is an example of a town planned on a grid system in the late 11th century. The Roman model was also used in Spanish settlements during the Reconquista of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was subsequently applied in
7239-594: The Resident Commissioner, James Hurtle Fisher . The rural area surrounding Adelaide was surveyed by Light in preparation to sell a total of over 405 km (156 sq mi) of land. Adelaide's early economy started to get on its feet in 1838 with the arrival of livestock from Victoria , New South Wales and Tasmania . Wool production provided an early basis for the South Australian economy. By 1860, wheat farms had been established from Encounter Bay in
7366-409: The amount of land that is devoted to streets, which becomes unavailable for development and therefore represents an opportunity cost . The wider the street, the higher the opportunity cost. Street width is determined by circulation and aesthetic considerations and is not dependent on the pattern configuration. Any configuration can have wide or narrow streets. Street length influences proportionately
7493-468: The arts, building upon the biennial " Adelaide Festival of Arts " that commenced in 1960. The State Bank collapsed in 1991 during an economic recession. The effects lasted until 2004, when Standard & Poor's reinstated South Australia's AAA credit rating. Adelaide's tallest building, completed in 2020, is called the Adelaidean and is located at 11 Frome Street. In the early years of the 21st century,
7620-556: The beginning of the 20th century, with Sapporo , Japan (est. 1868) following a grid plan under American influence. New European towns were planned using grids beginning in the 12th century, most prodigiously in the bastides of southern France that were built during the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval European new towns using grid plans were widespread, ranging from Wales to the Florentine region. Many were built on ancient grids originally established as Roman colonial outposts. In
7747-544: The choice and directness of route to desired destinations. In ancient Rome , the grid plan method of land measurement was called centuriation . The grid plan dates from antiquity and originated in multiple cultures; some of the earliest planned cities were built using grid plans in the Indian subcontinent. By 2600 BC, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa , major cities of the Indus Valley civilization , were built with blocks divided by
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#17328523053417874-730: The city centre and surrounding Park Lands is called Tarndanya in the Kaurna language . Adelaide is situated on the Adelaide Plains north of the Fleurieu Peninsula , between the Gulf St Vincent in the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. Its metropolitan area extends 20 km (12 mi) from the coast to the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and stretches 96 km (60 mi) from Gawler in
8001-499: The city centre in a grid layout known as " Light's Vision ", interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and entirely surrounded by park lands. Early colonial Adelaide was shaped by the diversity and wealth of its free settlers, in contrast to the convict history of other Australian cities. It was Australia's third most populated city until the post-war era. It has been noted for its leading examples of religious freedom and progressive political reforms, and became known as
8128-507: The city centre. There are two sets of ring roads in Adelaide that have resulted from the original design. The inner ring route ( A21 ) borders the parklands, and the outer route ( A3 / A13 / A16 / A17 ) completely bypasses the inner city via (in clockwise order) Grand Junction Road , Hampstead Road, Ascot Avenue, Portrush Road , Cross Road and South Road . Suburban expansion has to some extent outgrown Light's original plan. Numerous former outlying villages and "country towns", as well as
8255-399: The city should have the Royal Court situated in the south, the Marketplace in the north, the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the east and the Altar to the Gods of Land and Grain in the west." Teotihuacan , near modern-day Mexico City , is the largest ancient grid-plan site in the Americas . The city's grid covered 21 square kilometres (8 square miles). Perhaps the most well-known grid system
8382-399: The city. The plan involved the construction of freeways, expressways and the upgrade of certain aspects of the public transport system. The then premier Steele Hall approved many parts of the plan and the government went as far as purchasing land for the project. The later Labor government elected under Don Dunstan shelved the plan, but allowed the purchased land to remain vacant, should
8509-460: The city. The project of this architect for Vasilyevsky Island was a typical rectangular grid of streets (originally intended to be canals, like in Amsterdam ), with three lengthwise thoroughfares, rectangularly crossed with about 30 crosswise streets. The shape of street blocks on Vasilyevsky Island are the same, as was later implemented in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 for Manhattan : elongated rectangles. The longest side of each block faces
8636-399: The coastal length of the suburb until reaching neighbouring suburb West Beach. The suburb is serviced by the following main roads: The suburb is serviced by bus routes, run by the Adelaide Metro : Adelaide Adelaide ( / ˈ æ d ɪ l eɪ d / AD -il-ayd , locally [ˈædəlæɪd] ; Kaurna : Tardanya , pronounced [ˈd̪̥aɳɖaɲa] )
8763-432: The coastline due to erosion. Where practical, the government has implemented programs to rebuild and vegetate sandhills at several of Adelaide's beachside suburbs. Tennyson Dunes is the largest contiguous, tertiary dune system contained entirely within Metropolitan Adelaide, providing refuge for a variety of remnant species formerly found along the entire coastline. Much of the original vegetation has been cleared with what
8890-450: The community unit at hand—the clan or extended family in the Muslim world, the economically homogeneous subdivision in modern suburbia—isolates itself from the larger urban scene by using dead ends and culs-de-sac . One famous grid system is in the British new town of Milton Keynes . In this planned city, which began construction in 1967, a system of ten "horizontal" (roughly east–west) and eleven "vertical" (roughly north–south) roads
9017-401: The country. Another well-known grid plan is the plan for New York City formulated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 , a proposal by the state legislature of New York for the development of most of Manhattan above Houston Street . Washington, D.C. , the capital of the United States , was planned under French-American architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant . Under the L'Enfant plan,
9144-451: The delta of the Neva River . The peculiarity of 'lines' (streets) naming in this grid is that are each side of street has its own number, so one 'line' is a side of a street, not the whole street. The numbering is latently zero-based, however the supposed "zero line" has its proper name Kadetskaya liniya , while the opposite side of this street is called the '1-st Line'. Next street is named
9271-580: The downthrown St Vincent Basin and its embayments, including the Adelaide Plains Sub-basin, and the Golden Grove, Noarlunga and Willunga Embayments. These basins contain deposits of Tertiary marine and non-marine sands and limestones, which form important aquifers. These deposits are overlain by Quaternary alluvial fans and piedmont slope deposits, derived from erosion of the uplands, consisting of sands, clays and gravels, interfingering to
9398-536: The early development of a brick-making industry, as well as the use of stone, for houses and other buildings. By 1891, 68% of houses were built of stone, 15% of timber, and 10% of brick, with brick also being widely used in stone houses for quoins, door and window surrounds, and chimneys and fireplaces. There is a wide variety in the styles of these houses. Until the 1960s, most of the more substantial houses were built of red brick, though many front walls were of ornamental stone. Then cream bricks became fashionable, and in
9525-627: The east of Adelaide, are defined on their western side by a number of arcuate faults (the Para, Eden, Clarendon and Willunga Faults), and consist of rocks such as siltstone , dolomite and quartzite , dating from the Neoproterozoic to the middle Cambrian , laid down in the Adelaide Rift Complex, the oldest part of the Adelaide Superbasin . Most of the Adelaide metropolitan area lies in
9652-479: The edges of the superblock, along the arterial. This paradigm prevailed between about 1930 and 1960, especially in Los Angeles , where notable examples include Leimert Park (an early example) and Panorama City (a late-period one). A prominent 20th century urbanist, Lewis Mumford , severely criticized some of the grid's characteristics: "With a T-square and a triangle, finally, the municipal engineer could, without
9779-423: The forum, around which would be sited important public buildings. Indeed, such was the degree of similarity between towns that Higgins states that soldiers "would be housed at the same address as they moved from castra to castra ". Pompeii has been cited by both Higgins and Laurence as the best-preserved example of the Roman grid. Outside of the castra, large tracts of land were also divided in accordance with
9906-625: The future need for freeways arise. In 1980, the Liberal party won government and premier David Tonkin committed his government to selling off the land acquired for the MATS plan, ensuring that even when needs changed, the construction of most MATS-proposed freeways would be impractical. Some parts of this land have been used for transport, (e.g. the O-Bahn Busway and Southern Expressway), while most has been progressively subdivided for residential use. In 2008,
10033-434: The grid further out from the centre, but maps also show that, in general, as the distance from the centre increases, a variety of patterns emerge in no particular discernible order. In juxtaposition to the grid, they appear random. These new patterns have been systematically classified and their design characteristics measured. In the United States, the grid system was widely used in most major cities and their suburbs until
10160-401: The grid within the walls. These were typically 730 metres (2,400 ft) per side (called centuria ) and contained 100 parcels of land (each called heredium ). The decumanus maximus and cardo maximus extended from the town gates out towards neighbouring settlements. These were lined up to be as straight as possible, only deviating from their path due to natural obstacles that prevented
10287-457: The higher the frequency of the streets. As the frequency of street increases so does the number of intersections. Intersections normally cost more than straight street length because they are labour-intensive and require street and traffic signage. Pavement width influences the cost by affecting the amount of materials and labour required to provide a finished road surface. Pavement width is generally based on traffic engineering considerations and
10414-553: The hilly landscape typical of Greece and Asia Minor. The street grid consisted of plateiai and stenophoi (equivalent to Roman decumani and cardines ). This was probably best exemplified in Priene , in present-day western Turkey, where the orthogonal city grid was based on the cardinal points, on sloping terrain that struck views out towards a river and the city of Miletus . The Etruscan people , whose territories in Italy encompassed what would eventually become Rome, founded what
10541-575: The ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield about colonial reform, Robert Gouger petitioned the British government to create a new colony in Australia, resulting in the passage of the South Australia Act 1834 . Physical establishment of the colony began with the arrival of the first British colonisers in February 1836. The first governor proclaimed the commencement of colonial government in South Australia on 28 December 1836, near The Old Gum Tree in what
10668-589: The ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield . Wakefield had read accounts of Australian settlement while in prison in London for attempting to abduct an heiress, and realised that the eastern colonies suffered from a lack of available labour, due to the practice of giving land grants to all arrivals. Wakefield's idea was for the Government to survey and sell the land at a rate that would maintain land values high enough to be unaffordable for labourers and journeymen. Funds raised from
10795-599: The new cities established during the Spanish colonization of the Americas , after the founding of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Canary Islands) in 1496. In 1573, King Philip II of Spain compiled the Laws of the Indies to guide the construction and administration of colonial communities. The Laws specified a square or rectangular central plaza with eight principal streets running from the plaza's corners. Hundreds of grid-plan communities throughout
10922-729: The newly founded city of Mannheim in Germany was the first Renaissance city laid out on the grid plan. Later came the New Town in Edinburgh and almost the entire city centre of Glasgow , and many planned communities and cities in Australia , Canada and the United States . Derry , constructed in 1613–1618, was the first planned city in Ireland . The central diamond within a walled city with four gates
11049-439: The north to Sellicks Beach in the south. Named in honour of Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen , wife of King William IV , the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for the only freely-settled British province in Australia. Colonel William Light , one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city centre and chose its location close to the River Torrens . Light's design, now listed as national heritage , set out
11176-405: The number of street components that have to be constructed such as pavement, curbs and sidewalks, storm sewers and drains, light poles, and trees. The street length of a given area of development depends on the frequency at which streets occur which in turn depends on the length and width of a block. The higher the frequency of streets the longer is their total length. The smaller the block dimensions
11303-479: The numbered streets appeared in the continental part of the city: 13 streets named from the '1-st Rota' up to the '13-th Rota', where the companies ( German : Rotte , Russian : рота ) of the Izmaylovsky Regiment were located. Many of the earliest cities in the United States, such as Boston , did not start with a grid system. However, even in pre-revolutionary days some cities saw the benefits of such
11430-409: The only transport infrastructure developed to cope with the urban growth. The O-Bahn Busway is an example of a unique solution to Tea Tree Gully's transport woes in the 1980s. The development of the nearby suburb of Golden Grove in the late 1980s followed a planned approach to urban growth. In the 1960s, a Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study Plan was proposed to cater for the future growth of
11557-501: The original District of Columbia was developed using a grid plan that is interrupted by diagonal avenues, most famously Pennsylvania Avenue . These diagonals are often connected by traffic circles , such as Dupont Circle and Washington Circle . As the city grew, the plan was duplicated to cover most of the remainder of the capital. Meanwhile, the core of the city faced disarray and the McMillan Plan , led by Senator James McMillan ,
11684-430: The pedestrian perspective, the smaller the block is, the easier the navigation and the more direct the route. Consequently, the finer grids are preferred. Patterns that incorporate discontinuous street types such as crescents and culs-de-sac have not, in general, regarded pedestrian movement as a priority and, consequently, have produced blocks that are usually in the 1,000 feet (300 m) range and often exceed it. As
11811-631: The plains which stretched north and south of Tarntanya as well as the wooded foothills of the Mt Lofty Ranges . The River Torrens was known as the Karrawirra Pari (Red Gum forest river). About 300 Kaurna populated the Adelaide area, and were referred to by the settlers as the Cowandilla. There were more than 20 local clans across the plain who lived semi-nomadic lives, with extensive mound settlements where huts were built repeatedly over centuries and
11938-598: The planners of Tokyo eschewed the grid, opting instead for an irregular network of streets surrounding the Edo Castle grounds. In later periods, some parts of Tokyo were grid-planned, but grid plans are generally rare in Japan, and the Japanese addressing system is accordingly based on increasingly fine subdivisions, rather than a grid. The grid-planning tradition in Asia continued through
12065-585: The province. In 1860, the Thorndon Park reservoir was opened, providing an alternative water source to the now turbid River Torrens. Gas street lighting was implemented in 1867, the University of Adelaide was founded in 1874, the South Australian Art Gallery opened in 1881 and the Happy Valley Reservoir opened in 1896. In the 1890s Australia was affected by a severe economic depression, ending
12192-402: The rectilinear geometry, the wide streets and boulevards to sustain high mobility and the truncated corners to facilitate turning of carts and coaches and particularly vehicles on fixed rails. In maps of larger American cities, the downtown areas are almost always grids. These areas represent the original land dimensions of the founded city, generally around one square mile. Some cities expanded
12319-454: The relatively narrow street with a numeric name (in Petersburg they are called Liniya (Line) ) while the shortest side faces wide avenues. To denote avenues in Petersburg, a special term prospekt was introduced. Inside the grid of Vasilyevsky Island there are three prospekts, named Bolshoi ( Big ), Sredniy ( Middle ) and Maly ( Small ) while the far ends of each line cross with the embankments of Bolshaya Neva and Smolenka rivers in
12446-409: The reports of visitors in the early 20th century, noting that "many visitors to Adelaide admired the foresighted planning of its founders", as well as pondering the riches of the young city. Adelaide enjoyed a postwar boom, entering a time of relative prosperity. Its population grew, and it became the third most populous metropolitan area in the country, after Sydney and Melbourne . Its prosperity
12573-467: The river on 640 acres (exactly 1 square mile; about 2.6 km ). After surveying the land, Waller organized the almost immediate sale of 306 lots, and by the end of the year the entire Texas government had arrived by oxcart at the new site. Apart from the speed of surveying advantage, the rationale at the time of the grid's adoption in this and other cities remains obscure. In 1836 William Light drew up his plans for Adelaide , South Australia, spanning
12700-403: The sale of land were to be used to bring out working-class emigrants, who would have to work hard for the monied settlers to ever afford their own land. As a result of this policy, Adelaide does not share the convict settlement history of other Australian cities like Sydney , Brisbane and Hobart . As it was believed that in a colony of free settlers there would be little crime, no provision
12827-563: The satellite city of Elizabeth , have been enveloped by its suburban sprawl . Expanding developments in the Adelaide Hills region led to the construction of the South Eastern Freeway to cope with growth, which has subsequently led to new developments and further improvements to that transport corridor. Similarly, the booming development in Adelaide's South led to the construction of the Southern Expressway . New roads are not
12954-422: The second were usually too wide for purely neighborhood functions... as for its contribution to the permanent social functions of the city, the anonymous gridiron plan proved empty." In the 1960s, traffic engineers and urban planners abandoned the grid virtually wholesale in favor of a " street hierarchy ". This is a thoroughly "asymmetric" street arrangement in which a residential subdivision—often surrounded by
13081-438: The short name of Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute , Tarndanya, or Tarndanyangga , now the dual name for Victoria Square, in the Kaurna language . The name means 'male red kangaroo rock', referring to a rock formation on the site that has now been destroyed. The surrounding area was an open grassy plain with patches of trees and shrubs which had been managed by hundreds of generations. Kaurna country encompassed
13208-434: The slightest training as either an architect or a sociologist, 'plan' a metropolis, with its standard lots, its standard blocks, its standard street widths, in short, with its standardized comparable, and replaceable parts. The new gridiron plans were spectacular in their inefficiency and waste. By usually failing to discriminate sufficiently between main arteries and residential streets, the first were not made wide enough while
13335-673: The south to Clare in the north. George Gawler took over from Hindmarsh in late 1838 and, despite being under orders from the Select Committee on South Australia in Britain not to undertake any public works, promptly oversaw construction of a governor's house, the Adelaide Gaol , police barracks, a hospital, a customs house and a wharf at Port Adelaide . Gawler was recalled and replaced by George Edward Grey in 1841. Grey slashed public expenditure against heavy opposition, although its impact
13462-461: The street length. A simple example of a grid street pattern (see diagram) illustrates the progressive reduction in total street length (the sum of all individual street lengths) and the corresponding increase in block length. For a corresponding reduction of one, two, three and four streets within this 40-acre (16 ha) parcel, the street length is reduced from an original total of 12,600 feet (3,800 m) to 7,800 feet (2,400 m) linear feet,
13589-605: The summer typically range from 8 to 10 °C (46 to 50 °F). There are usually several days in summer where the temperature reaches 40.0 °C (104.0 °F) or above; the frequency of these temperatures has been increasing in recent years . Temperature extremes range from −0.4 °C (31.4 °F), 8 June 1982 to 47.7 °C (117.9 °F), 24 January 2019. The city features 90.6 clear days annually. The average sea temperature ranges from 13.7 °C (56.7 °F) in August to 21.2 °C (70.2 °F) in February. Adelaide
13716-407: The west with transgressive Pleistocene to Holocene marine sands and coastal sediments of the shoreline of Gulf St Vincent. Adelaide is a planned city, designed by the first Surveyor-General of South Australia, Colonel William Light . His plan, sometimes referred to as "Light's Vision" (also the name of a statue of him on Montefiore Hill ), arranged Adelaide in a grid , with five squares in
13843-460: The westward development of the United States, the use of the grid plan was nearly universal in the construction of new settlements, such as in Salt Lake City (1870), Dodge City (1872) and Oklahoma City (1890). In these western cities the streets were numbered even more carefully than in the east to suggest future prosperity and metropolitan status. One of the main advantages of the grid plan
13970-455: The wettest month of the year, averaging around 80 mm. Frosts are occasional, with the most notable occurrences in 1908 and 1982. Hail is common in winter. Adelaide is a windy city with significant wind chill in winter, which makes the temperature seem colder than it actually is . Snowfall in the metropolitan area is extremely rare, although light and sporadic falls in the nearby hills and at Mount Lofty occur during winter. Dewpoints in
14097-575: The world's second National Park City, after the state government had lobbied for this title. It was ranked the most liveable city in Australia by the Property Council of Australia , based on surveys of residents' views of their own city, between 2010 and 2013, dropping to second place in 2014. Adelaide, as the capital of South Australia, is the seat of the Government of South Australia . The bicameral Parliament of South Australia consists of
14224-412: Was adopted to build a National Mall and a parks system that is still today a jewel of the city. Often, some of the streets in a grid are numbered (First, Second, etc.), lettered, or arranged in alphabetical order. Downtown San Diego uses all three schemes: north–south streets are numbered from west to east, and east–west streets are split between a lettered series running southward from A through L and
14351-457: Was considered a good design for defence. The grid pattern was widely copied in the colonies of British North America . In Russia the first planned city was St. Petersburg founded in 1703 by Peter I . Being aware of the modern European construction experience which he examined in the years of his Grand Embassy to Europe , the Czar ordered Domenico Trezzini to elaborate the first general plan of
14478-470: Was consistently ranked in the world's 10 most liveable cities through the 2010s by The Economist Intelligence Unit . In June 2021, The Economist ranked Adelaide the third most liveable city in the world, behind Auckland and Osaka . In June 2023, Adelaide was ranked the twelfth most liveable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit. In December 2021, Adelaide was named
14605-606: Was created to facilitate the State Government's collaboration with the Adelaide City Council and the Lord Mayor to improve Adelaide's image. The State Parliament's Capital City Committee is also involved in the governance of the City of Adelaide, being primarily concerned with the planning of Adelaide's urban development and growth. Reflecting South Australia's status as Australia's most centralised state, Adelaide elects
14732-444: Was expanded at the nearby port of Whyalla . The South Australian Government in this period built on former wartime manufacturing industries but neglected cultural facilities which meant South Australia's economy lagged behind. International manufacturers like Holden and Chrysler made use of these factories around the Adelaide area in suburbs like Elizabeth , completing its transformation from an agricultural service centre to
14859-410: Was extended through the city to Hindmarsh down to East Terrace and the suburban railway line extended south to Seaford. Following a period of stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s, Adelaide began several major developments and redevelopments. The Adelaide Convention Centre was redeveloped and expanded at a cost of A$ 350 million beginning in 2012. Three historic buildings were adapted for modern use:
14986-415: Was given its own name. The system provided very easy transport within the city, although it confused visitors who were unfamiliar with the system. The grid squares thus formed are far larger than the city blocks described earlier, and the road layouts within the grid squares are generally 'organic' in form – matching the street hierarchy model described above. Street width , or right of way (ROW), influences
15113-772: Was made for a gaol in Colonel Light's 1837 plan. But by mid-1837 the South Australian Register was warning of escaped convicts from New South Wales and tenders for a temporary gaol were sought. Following a burglary, a murder, and two attempted murders in Adelaide during March 1838, Governor Hindmarsh created the South Australian Police Force (now the South Australia Police ) in April 1838 under 21-year-old Henry Inman . The first sheriff, Samuel Smart,
15240-729: Was more than double the current rate. In 2009, after several decades of road safety improvements and a continuous decline in fatalities, an estimated 33,963 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes and, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for children from 3 to 14 years old." Planners, therefore, called for an inwardly focused " superblock " arrangement that minimized through automobile traffic and discouraged cars from traveling on anything but arterial roads ; traffic generators, such as apartment complexes and shops, would be restricted to
15367-452: Was negligible at this point: silver was discovered in Glen Osmond that year, agriculture was well underway, and other mines sprung up all over the state, aiding Adelaide's commercial development. The city exported meat, wool, wine, fruit and wheat by the time Grey left in 1845, contrasting with a low point in 1842 when one-third of Adelaide houses were abandoned. Trade links with the rest of
15494-464: Was recorded, but the price paid was retrenchments and lean public spending. Wine and copper were the only industries not to suffer a downturn. Adelaide was Australia's third largest city for most of the 20th century. Electric street lighting was introduced in 1900 and electric trams were transporting passengers in 1909. 28,000 men were sent to fight in World War I . Historian F. W. Crowley examined
15621-574: Was short-lived, with the return of droughts and the Great Depression of the 1930s. It later returned to fortune under strong government leadership. Secondary industries helped reduce the state's dependence on primary industries . World War II brought industrial stimulus and diversification to Adelaide under the Playford Government, which advocated Adelaide as a safe place for manufacturing due to its less vulnerable location. Shipbuilding
15748-411: Was surpassed by Brisbane as Australia's third largest city. The Dunstan Governments of the 1970s saw something of an Adelaide "cultural revival", establishing a wide array of social reforms. The city became noted for its progressivism as South Australia became the first Australian state or territory to decriminalise homosexuality between consenting adults in 1975. Adelaide became a centre for
15875-563: Was that it allowed the rapid subdivision and auction of a large parcel of land. For example, when the legislature of the Republic of Texas decided in 1839 to move the capital to a new site along the Colorado River , the functioning of the government required the rapid population of the town, which was named Austin . Charged with the task, Edwin Waller designed a fourteen-block grid that fronted
16002-432: Was used, with roundabouts at each intersection. The horizontal roads were all given names ending in 'way' and H numbers (for 'horizontal', e.g., H3 Monks Way). The vertical roads were given names ending in 'street' and V numbers (for 'vertical', e.g., V6 Grafton Street ). Each grid road was spaced roughly one kilometre along from the next, forming squares of approximately one square kilometre. Each square and each roundabout
16129-552: Was wounded during a robbery, and on 2 May 1838 one of the offenders, Michael Magee, became the first person to be hanged in South Australia. William Baker Ashton was appointed governor of the temporary gaol in 1839, and in 1840 George Strickland Kingston was commissioned to design Adelaide's new gaol. Construction of Adelaide Gaol commenced in 1841. Adelaide's early history was marked by economic uncertainty and questionable leadership. The first governor of South Australia, John Hindmarsh , clashed frequently with others, in particular
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