What Was Never Built
Two thirds of the plan is grass.
Two thirds of the plan is grass, and that is the argument rather than a gap in it. These quarters deal with the empty squares: why nobody came, how the occupied area shrank inside its own street grid, and how to read a quarter that was surveyed and left.
4 quarters
Every piece in this section-
XXIX
Two Thirds of It Is Grass
The plan was drawn for a population that never came, and most of the quarters were never built on. What an unbuilt medieval town square looks like on the ground, and how to see the streets that still serve nothing.
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XXX
The Population That Never Arrived
Why the town did not fill: the raids, the harbour, the plague, and the plain fact that a planned foundation depends on trade it cannot command.
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XXXIII
A Town That Shrank Inside Its Own Plan
How the occupied area contracted toward the church over centuries, leaving the outer quarters as fields inside a street grid.
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XXXIV
Reading an Empty Quarter
Earthworks, boundary lines, hollow ways and plot divisions still legible in grass. What survives of a square that was laid out and never occupied.
