When William Penn laid out Philadelphia he was quite generous, placing a rational yet humane grid over an area roughly equal in size to Paris. Unlike New York City, the grid yielded to green spaces, small urban parks that would provide focal points for the great commercial districts that Penn believed would fuel the growing city. But Penn miscalculated. Philadelphia grew up first along one edge, at the shoreline of the Delaware River, and the rest of the city only began to fill out well into the nineteenth century. Today it is hard to see the roots of Philadelphia along the Delaware. The traders and longshoreman have disappeared, as have the gantries that replaced them. And then, in the 1950s, Interstate 95 offered the final blow to this withering sector and effectively severed the city from its waterfront.
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