Olynthus: Social and spatial planning in a Greek city

Planning a Classical Greek city involved more than simply laying out its streets, blocks and public buildings. The polis encompassed both city and citizens, and the creation of a new polis entailed bringing a new organization to both the land and its new occupants. This study examines some of these processes and the parallels between them, the ways in which the physical organization of a polis may reflect the social organization of its citizens. It addresses a number of interlocked issues in of Greek city planning: utopian theories of philosophers and planners; the geometry of Greek cities; the distribution of land in newly-founded settlements; and the spatial organization of different sorts of civic and private groups of citizens.; The study looks at the city of Olynthus as an example of a Greek polis, and examines patterns in the organization of houses, blocks and neighborhoods of the city. A few historical issues are addressed, especially the effects of the anoikismos of 432 BC, the population of Olynthus, and the reoccupation of the city after its destruction in 348 BC. The thousands of finds from the destruction level help us reconstruct the functions of different rooms and the organization of houses. An analysis of house plans suggests that the houses of each row or block were built at the same time and by related groups of people, so that the insulae formed coherent social as well as physical units of the city. Other factors can be related to the design of houses and the activities which went on in them, for instance proximity to the agora and to primary commercial arteries of the city. A kind of natural zoning is therefore apparent at Olynthus, with households in different regions of the city building houses of different plans, cooking and storing agricultural products differently, engaging in different occupations and trades, participating to various degrees in the commercial economy of the city. This zoning was probably envisioned at the time the city was laid out, and was realized through the processes in which citizens disposed themselves in the initial partition and distribution of land.