Chicago’s streets do not have to go around mountains or other features that can interrupt an orderly street grid. Still another advantage Chicago had was its geography. A map of downtown Chicago will reveal the truth that many longtime Chicago renters know: this concentrated area of skyscrapers, office towers, theaters, and museums only makes up a few square miles of Chicago’s footprint,t but not surprisingly, all trains and roads lead there eventually.

First was the Great Chicago Fire which gave the city a blank slate, and second was the Plan of Chicago – a bold vision for what an ideal, beautiful city could look like. map shows proposed renewable resources under study for possible interconnection to the grid. In The Politics of Place: a History of Zoning in Chicago, we learn that Chicago had two great advantages in creating an orderly system of streets and other necessary public works (sewers, refuse collection, etc.). This map shows the flow of electricity into and out of PJM. Some of the credit for our grid system of streets is due to the Public Land Survey System. Chicago's grid is easily spotted when flying into O'Hare. But it is not the tall buildings of the Loop that create the order and sense of direction that make it easy to get around Chicago. List of Street Names in Chicago, Illinois, Maps and Steets Views. Each section of the grid is one square mile. Chicago has sometimes been said to be the prairie town that built its own mountain range (the skyscrapers of the Loop). The urban structure of Chicago is founded on the basic square of Thomas Jefferson’s grid, which was adopted in 1785 to survey the land as the US expanded westward. In some parts of the world, wayfinding is often practiced with regard to mountains – landmarks that you can see and tell if you are going toward, away from or alongside of.

In this age of GPS, having a sense of direction is often a vestigial skill.

Grid map of chicago