Sacramento’s central grid was first planned in the mid-1800s, shortly after the first discoveries of gold. Anticipating that Sacramento would become a huge source of revenue, John Sutter, Jr. asked his planners to develop the city on a grid so that he could organize his land and economic holdings as simply as possible. As such, Sacramento’s central grid was not planned to further any particular conception of the ideal city, but solely for Sutter’s own speculative goals.

Image Source: Google Earth, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/2018588053/)