Prof. S.K. Patil, www.skpatil.

com 1

Transportation Engineering – II (Town Planning)

Greek & Roman Town Planning

Course Learning Outcomes:

• At the end of this session, the student will be able to understand
principles of Town Planning with reference to Greek and Roman
Culture.

1/7/2018 .
 Prof. S.K. Patil, www.skpatil.com 2

Prof. (Dr.) Sachin Kishor Patil

B.E. Civil, M.E. Civil Environmental Engineering, Ph.D. (IIT, Bombay)
❑ Professor & Head of Department
❑ Department of Civil Engineering
❑ AMGOI, Vathar, Kolhapur, MH, India.

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1/7/2018 Disclaimer and acknowledgment

The Greek World

http://www.uoregon.edu/~atlas/europe/maps.html
The Greek Polis
The Greek Polis
 Source of Greek
Creativity
 Each citizen was
expected to participate in
the polis in regard to its:
 Politicallife
 Economic relations
 Spiritual worship
 Social events (e.g.
dramatic performances)
 A self-governing city-
state
 Not large cities
 ‘Plato’ thought ideal city
should have 5,000
citizens
 Athens at its peak had a
bit over 1,00,000 citizens
Site and Culture
(enabling factors, not determining)

 No floods
 Abundant and diverse resources
 Fish, grain, grapes, olives, chestnuts, figs
 Many isolated valleys and islands (natural barriers)
 Sea
 Isolation meant greater security, so power took a less aggressive form
both externally and internally
 Greek Towns
• Greeks built small towns
appropriate for human scale
• Natural borders for the town
• Parts of the town were planned
according to geometrical patterns
and others according to defensive
measures
• Democracy,
• Buildings of poor and rich,
• public baths.
 Greek Towns Agora and Acropolis
 Agora
 Gathering place and market
 Place for public event
 Agora on the road from the harbor,
in the center and includes :
 Assembly hall
 Council hall
 Chamber hall
 Bordered by temples, workshops,
vendors’ stalls, statues
 Acropolis
 Elevated temple district
 Contained various temples
 Architectural “vocabulary” used
well into the 20th c. for banks,
courthouses, town halls, etc.
 Periodic processions to
Acropolis also celebrated the
polis

Separation of church and state was indicated by

distance between the agora and the acropolis
Hippodamus First Greek Architect

 Gridded roads
 House blocks
(rectangular)
 Imp roads parallel
to shore (Straight
& Wide)
 Outline of town –
not necessarily
rectangular
City Priene
G. Agora, L, Q. Gymnasium.
 400 dwellings with
4000 population Market. N. Theatre,
 Agora surrounded by A, B, C. -Gates. O. Water reservoir,
public buildings and D, E, F, H, M, P. - R. Race-course
residential blocks Temples
 Each Resi. Block -4/5 I -Council House,
houses
 Broad road aprox 23
ft wide
 Short road ‘T’ – 10 ft
wide
 City Priene

A, B, C. Gates.
D, E, F, H, M, P. Temples
G. Agora, Market.
I. Council House,
L, Q. Gymnasium.
N. Theatre,
O. Water-reservoir,
R. Race-course
Babylon City
Roman versus Greeks
 Not as playful or moderate as the
Greeks
 Inclined toward violence,
exploitation and gross excesses
of consumption
 Their greatest achievements often
bear the mark of excess but also
considerable engineering skill
 Rome was basically supported by
forced tribute & taxes
 Conquered Greek by 133 BC
and cloned many of their
urban design concepts
 Theater
 Amphitheater
 Temples built on the Greek
model, with prominent
colonnades
 Agora was appropriated and
became the forum
Cities as instruments of empire

 Rome expanded beyond Italian peninsula in 133BC

 Romans played their enemies off each other, then planted
colonial cities to administer conquered lands
 The “castra” or army camp was walled and laid out in a grid
→ planned cities (< 5,000 pop.)
 Empire’s maximum extent by 211AD, collapsed after 250AD
A Roman “castra” &typical Roman town

The city was divided into quarters by the creation of two

perpendicular streets: the Cardo and the Decumanus
 Roman cities
 plenty of towns in invaded areas -
medium towns to keep agriculture
around.
 Division of agricultural land into
rectangular parcels.
 Grid pattern for most of Roman cities
 The city was divided into neighborhoods
and quarters with their own centers
 Two major and central intersected roads
:
 Cardo : North South

 Decomanus : East West

 * The Forum at the intersection of the

Torino - Italy
two major roads : the central public
space
Romans

 The Romans were very practical but they also carried

remnants of an older, mystical view of the city
 Augury (an animal was cut open in order to examine its
entrails for signs that it was a good or bad place for a city)
 At founding of a city, a priest would plow the outline of the
city to ritually mark it off from the surrounding wilderness
 The city was divided into quarters by the creation of two
perpendicular streets: the Cardo and the Decumanus
Grid (or gridiron) plan served practical purposes, as well

 Easy to lay out

 Easy to administer
 Breezes could flow through for natural ventilation
 Easy to defend if walled
Pompeii

Pompeii shows that this was an ideal, not a rule

Source: http://www.pompeii.co.uk/cd/map.htm
Forum

The Forum was their

version of the agora

(this one is in Pompeii, a

city preserved in volcanic
ash of Mt. Vesuvius from
the 1st century BC)
Forum--Pompei
The Forum

 Bordered by everything important: temples, offices, jails,

butcher shops
 Public processions and ceremonies took place there
 For a mainly pedestrian population, the surrounding
colonnade was a very important urban design feature
 Main forum in Rome
senate
public records chambers

temples law courts

Roman Forum (artist’s conception)

Source: A.E.J. Morris, History of Urban Form

Amphitheater, Pompeii

Important
“furnishings” for a
Roman city
• Amphitheater
• Theater
• Baths
Large Theater, Pompeii
Small theater, Pompeii
What do these artifacts “tell” us?

 Found in
Pompeii
 Suggests the
attention and
care given to
handicrafts in
cities
 Shows
importance of
food storage
Roads
 When it came to roads, the Romans understood the highway
better than the city street (like us)
 The intersection of the cardo and the decumanus created a
terrible traffic jam in the middle of the city
 Wheel rims on stone streets made a terrible racket (1st
known traffic law was a ban on wheeled traffic during
daylight hours imposed by Julius Ceasar)
 Night-time noise was reported to be deafening
How civilized were the Romans?

 For a few hundred years their aggressive, exploitative

culture appeared to be eternal
 “Pax Romana” (the Roman peace) was a form of civilization
 The core of the empire, the city of Rome
 Roman “insula” (apartment bldgs.) often burned or fell down, had
no air conditioning, plumbing or heating
 Sewers were often open-air, and were not connected to housing
above the 1st floor; dismal for a city of 1 million
 Deprived entertainment
 Stagnant economy
Colosseum, Rome
The grandaddy of all Roman public places
The Colosseum
 Colosseum < colosseus < colossus (something extremely
huge)
 Altered in English to “coliseum”
 Held between 60,000 and 90,000
 Dwarfed by the “Circus Maximus” (lost)
 Over a mile of plumbing pipes supplied public drinking
fountains and lavatories
 Was used by the Romans for everything from naval
competitions to gladiatorial competitions
 Was used in the Middle Ages as a living space, grazing
space, and fortress
Colosseum, Rome: X-section
The Colosseum today: a grotesque skeleton
Roman entertainment
 Mass slaughter as entertainment
 Up to thousands of human an animal lives taken in one “game” day
 “Performers” included Christians & lions, gladiators, exotic wild
animals, captives & prisoners
 Bodies dumped unceremoniously in enormous stinking pits at edge
of town
 175 game days a year by end of the empire
 People left the colosseum by the “vomitorium,” named after
the special-purpose room in a house dedicated to purging
(after typical Roman bingeing)
Subterranean level

Held persons and

animals prior to
their use in
“contests” and
spectacles
Practicality
 seems to be embodied in a cleverly constructed environment
 Their aqueducts may remind us of our own reservoirs and
pipelines
 Their carefully-designed streets and roads may remind us of
our paved roads, freeways, and sidewalks
 Their use of a street grid may remind us of our own regularly
laid out urban landscape
Typical Roman street, Pompeii
Pont du Gard, France
(brought water to city of Nimes)
Odd mix of practicality and impracticality

 Their passion for size and excess pushed them to

unsustainable levels of consumption and territorial
expansion
 They aqueducts were not strictly needed; they were as
much about demonstrating imperial power as about
gaining access to water
 City of Rome had 1352 fountains and 967 free baths
Public baths,Pompeii

Romans took public

bathing to an extreme:
hot, cold, and lukewarm
pools, places to get a
massage or work out,
even reading rooms
Baths of Diocletian today
What they may have looked like in 300 AD
luxury and comfort
A courtyard surrounded by a colonnade or
portico (peristyle)
Residential fountain in Pompeii

Outside the city of Rome the

empire probably seemed very
good, because its fundamental
unsustainability and unjust
behavior was less visible there
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.”