...the confusion of the downtown (Atlanta) street configuration is the result of three different land lot owners setting up their own conflicting grids which were aligned with the existing roads and railroad tracks, but which lacked transitions points where traffic could flow easily from one section to another. Timothy J. Crimmons The Atlanta Palimpsest in the Atlanta Historical Journal.
PALIMPSEST= The visual evidence which is our concern here is the evidence that presents itself when we look at a town: the pattern of its streets and buildings, the blemishes upon the uniformity of the present that remind us of the past. If we think of what we see as a text, we recognize very soon that it is not a simple one: beneath the characters that we first trace, there are other words and phrases to be read: the town is a palimpsest.
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visible layers of writing on old wax tablets. In America, a simple grid of streets and blocks usually made the
first layer of the city. Sometimes the grid was just a simple plan or diagram. At other times, they were more
elaborate, like SAVANNAH or PHILADELPHIA. 
But the grid of blocks and streets was a framework that related the
parts of the city together. Atlanta's still-visible traces reveal a different way of city-building. The city began
as a collection of unrelated street grids around the Zero Mile Post, each one independently subdivided by the
owner. Instead of building orderly connections across the growing city, property owners built independently of
each other, negotiating local conditions and making their plans accordingly. The old Indian trails and mill
roads became the armature for the growing city. In 1853, the City tried to correct the confusion by superimposing a 
north-south, east-west grid of streets for all unplatted land within the one-mile-radius city limits. But unlike
Manhattan, where the Commissioners' Plan extended New York's grid everywhere, Atlanta's railroads and wagon trails
interrupted the new grid so often that it just became another layer of confusion. Later, instead of trying to build
a bigger grid, new streets were laid out like ARTERIES AND VEINS of the human body, giving life to the hills and
valleys of the Georgia Piedmont. So, Atlanta never had an overall plan or framework to order its growth. Atlanta
is a random accumulation of individual acts.
Atlanta Essay 
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