I recently read J.B. Ward-Perkins’ 1974 Cities of Ancient Greece and Italy. The author starts with the premise that because the classical world was an essentially urban civilization, planning was a fundamental part of its identity. He surveys the towns of the archaic Aegean shores, then delves into the record of Hippodamus of Miletus — the fifth century (BC) planner of Piræus and the Magna Græcia colonies. (A contemporary of Plato, he is also the oldest planner to be remembered by name.) After a brief look at urbanism in the east during the Hellenistic period, Ward-Perkins devotes the rest of the text to describing the development of cities in the Roman west. It’s a great quick read: The entire book is just 128 pages, and more than half of these are maps, photos, or endnotes. The maps cover all of the greatest hits of Greco-Roman urbanism, including Athens and Ostia, and a couple of my personal favorites: Lepcis Magna and Pergamon (seen below). I suspect that this book was one inspiration for Diana Kleiner’s amazing Roman Architecture class at Yale; she uses another of Ward-Perkins’ books for a lot of her assigned readings.