Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design

Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design is the result of a five-year design research project undertaken by professor Joan Busquets and Dingliang Yang at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The research that is the foundation for this publication emphasises the value of open forms for city design, a publication that specifically insists that the grid has the unique capacity to absorb and channel urban transformation flexibly and productively. 

Urban Grids analyses cities and urban projects that utilise the grid as the main structural device for allowing rational development, and goes further to propose speculative design projects capable of suggesting new urban paradigms drawn from the grid as a design tool. Consisting of six major parts, it is divided into the following topics: 1) the atlas of grid cities, 2) grid projects through history, 3) the 20th-century dilemma, 4) the atlas of contemporary grid projects, 5) projective tools for the future, and 6) goodgrid city as an open form coping with new urban issues.

- Urban Grids, which is both historical and projective, explores the potential of the grid as a design tool in producing a multitude of urban processes and forms
- Aimed at both academic and professional audiences who are involved with city planning, urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture

About the Authors:

Joan Busquets, world-renowned urban planner and architect, is the first Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Dingliang Yang is currently a teaching fellow and research associate, as well as a Doctor of Design Candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is the founding principal of VARY Design.