A common alternate method of street arrangement is the grid (...) It has very ancient roots. The Bronze Age villages of northern Italy were laid out in a clear rectangular grid and so was the ancient Indus city of Mohenjo-Daro; Greek colonial cities, Roman camps, and medieval towns (...) were all planned on it. It has been the preferred form for new communities. It is systematic, easy to lay out, and provides equal, rectangular building sites. It allows a numbering system for easy location. The motives for choosing a grid may be philosophic (...) or they may be strictly utilitarian, as when the Commissioners laying out Manhattan in 1811 rejected circles, ovals, and stars and decided that "strait-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in." (...) Size, density, grain, outline, pattern - all are basic aspects of the city's physical form. The impression of monotony arises in part from the lack of necessary specialization; it is not inherent in the pattern (...) Yet towering buildings set on open ground may have only an illusory advantage if overall densities remain high and the open spaces are overloaded. In certain sections, particularly shopping and office areas, there is both a technical and a psychological need for concentration which the open pattern cannot supply (...) The modern city requires a rhythmical balance between enclosure and openness, [between] concentration and freedom. Quotes from Tridib Banerjee; Michael Southworth (ed): City Sense and City Dense. Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch, MIT Press 1991