The Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 established the grid as the principal ordering mechanism for the speculative territory of Manhattan.

The regularity and homogeneity of its 2,028 proposed blocks functioned as a limiting device that has largely prevented the imposition of larger more dominant systems that would evade its constraints – ensuring an ease of vehicular and pedestrian flow that aerates the dense porosity of the city. Where this system breaks down or is interrupted, pathologies can develop in the local urban tissue and the social vibrancy that typifies street life in New York is subject to retardation and stagnancy.