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I want to start off with this photo, and I want you to keep it in mind as we go through this presentation. This is the American Museum of Natural History, around 79th Street in Manhattan. -Notice the right of ways being established. - This is a telling feature of what the master street plan is all about. - This image will become more clear as we go on - But what is a master street plan, and why do we need it?

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- This is the Commissioners plan for NY’s Manhattan Island, the most famous and certainly the largest master street plan in history -The early 1800’s, New York was confined to the southern tip of the island - leaders at the time were pushing for growth of the City, and hired commissioners to create this plan -- It was a plan of that established every street we now know in Manhattan, stretching from around where Houston St and Broadway Street intersect all the way to Washington heights in the northern tip -- This plan for the streets then allowed developers to subdivide and build on their land according to the plan -- but it happened slowly – over 100 years as growth slowly crept north on the island – but continued to follow the plan -- the only major difference today is Central Park – not found in the original plan -- so here’s what development in new york looked like according to this plan

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-Here you can see how streets were laid out as the development reached those areas - These streets were as I said laid down according to the plan, creating the block spaces in between where private interests could then build to their needs - the public realm was already established – no need for planners or engineers to consider the street network at the time of development

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-Now we see development filling in the blocks -This was piecemeal – blocks were filled in as needed -- but each block was equal – they could be built on just as any other -And they were interconnected – building on your lot you knew you were already plugged into a larger urban whole – or that it would soon be filled in around you -And the grid block that was established by the master street plan meant that any use and building type could establish itself – homes, apartment buildings, businesses, offices, churches – all could plug themselves into the same infrastructure

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So what does the master street plan really allow? -It is the large scale – the macro level – of streets being laid out to define where the public realm is from the get go. It created a top-down order which ensures the city forms a cohesive whole - and then on the small –scale, in the blocks that are created from those streets, you have that real organic urbanism building itself up -- as jane jacobs so wonderfully pointed out at the end of the Death and Life, there is a complex organized order that healthy urban places embody, -thats what was allowed to happen in between these blocks thanks to the master street plan

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This diagram illustrates this concept The lighter blue is the public realm which was preconceived via plan, and constructed as needed when development reached it The darker blue is the private realm, which was forced inside the blocks created by the master street plan, and builders could decide what and how to build within these areas

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Here’s a US Army survey from around 1890. You can see this in action -The west side of central park was still very much an emerging part of the city -Some of the streets have been laid out, and some of the blocks are beginning to fill in -- and this again would take another few decades to fully be developed, over 100 years since the plan was created -The plan really focused where development was to go and created this larger connected urban whole that i keep talking about

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And of course today you can see how new york has benefited from the master street plan - The master street plan doesn't mean more people or businesses will move to you city – there are so many other factors involved with that – but it helps organize growth into a meangful pattern - But new york wasn't the only north american city that used the master street plan

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Here’s San Francisco, with similar gridded blocks laid across the peninsula creating the same interwoven, connected city

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Montreal, too had a master street plan that guided the development of the city for a portion of time You can see in this image how business and retail have been drawn to the major thoroughfares, leaving the streets in between that connect them to quieter residential development But its still interconnected

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And my city, Toronto, even has a form of the master street plan – albeit much less organized - But the same principles are in place with interconnected streets forming the healthy block structure

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And here’s what those places look like on the ground – thriving retail high streets regularly intersected by through cross streets

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These are thriving places because they are part of whole, not pockets of individual development

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Every block is connected to every other block, and development can thrive within them because it is part of this fabric of ‘togetherness’

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And master street plans don’t always need to be grids, although grids help because of the lower costs associated with building on square parcels Washington DC’s master street plan formed the wonderful neighbourhoods we see there today, and all part of connected streets and blocks

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So here is what the master street plan is really all about, and why we need it if we truly want to create successful thriving urban places that truly embody the principles of New Urbanism. And as a reminder of what cities look like without the master street plan

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Development occurs on each individual land holding, with new streets creating according to their own individual plans There is no connection, pockets of development are insular

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Arterial roads are traffic thru-ways only, instead of acting as the magnets for people and businesses and the connecters between neighbourhoods And of course there will never be any intensification or evolutionary growth as the connected street and block of the master street plan allows These are static entities of single uses and single building types

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Even new urbanist developments are prone to this – here is an example in calgary Its cut off from the rest of the city and other neighbourhoods because its has individually established its street and block pattern internal to itself

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And Toronto’s Cornell new urbanist community ahs the same problem. This is development in isoltation

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And just so you can see what this looks like on the ground, here’s Cornell via google street view. Buildings are pretty, but there isnt much else going on.

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And finally, to compare apples to apples – here’s a relatively new Canadian suburban development No master street plan, no real higher level organization

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And here at the same scale is that example from Montreal. Same uses and building types, but organized into a whole. An urban order of public space defining a self-emergent order of private space. Interconnected streets forming a tapestry of blocks that catalyze one another. The ability to grow and and evolve as the needs of the city changes

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And so this is why it is truly important, if we wish to build the kinds of cities and communities that new urbanism stands for, that we start thinking about how we can bring back the master street plan and better organize our cities as they continue to grow

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And there is a legal ability to do this. In the US, the Standard City Planning Enabling act will allow you, alongside your zoning code, to create a master street plan for how your city will grow and develop. My colleague Paul Knight has researched the legal basis for this, and you can read more about the actual implementation aspect of all this at his website

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