Hippodamus, a citizen of Miletus who is often considered the father of urban planning. It is not certain
that Hippodamus was actually connected with the plan to rebuild Miletus. We know, however, that he was
responsible for similar rectilinear plans for other Greek cities later in the fifth century BC, and we know
that his planning proceeded on the basis of theoretical considerations that sought to create rational
divisions both of the space of the city and of the city’s population. In this respect, and in the
comprehensiveness of his planning, he seems to have followed in the spirit of the Milesian philosophers
of the previous century. The rationalizing tendency in the fifth-century plan for Miletus is
characteristically Greek, and this plan may in fact have had precedents elsewhere in Greece as early as
the seventh or even late eighth century BC. For, during the period of overseas expansion, many new Greek
cities were laid out, some of them on what appear to have been quite a regular plan, but more limited in
scope than the all-inclusive design of Miletus. The basis for these newly founded cities was the equality
of the size of the parcels of land, which were distributed among the settlers by lot, and the simplest way
of ensuring equality was by using straight lines and right angles.
Figure 39 Town plan of Miletus, fifth century BC.
Source: Reproduced with the permission of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG from A. von Gerkan,
Griechische Städteanlagen: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung des Städtebaues im Altertum (Berlin and
Leipzig 1924), Tafel 6.
Now, it should be understood that insistence upon equality is not necessarily a “democratic” feature of
these new foundations or of Greek poleis in general (although this adherence to an ideal of equality was