There be devils at work here
That happens in every American city, it's called an American downtown
Why is everything else squares?
That's a good old fashioned American Grid System
Let's give credit where credit is due: the Romans popularized the grid system during the empire. America didn't invent that nonsense.
I don't actually feel that grids are that bad, with 4 way stop signs and narrow streets they can maintain slow car speeds, are easy to make for expansion of cities when needed and are great for navigation. The winding unconnected roads of suburbs are much worse and create bottlenecks which grids mostly lack
There is that but under our current economic system, the parcelling of cities into grids was used by and large as a tool of the american elites to make it easier to financialise land, because using a grid divided the land into simple rectangular parcels that made it easier to wholesale chunks of cities to investors.
I see what you mean but my feeling is that even with more unplanned winding development of cities like is seen in Lower Manhattan and the Greenwich Village, the land still would have ended up divided and sold, just in a much more difficult to navigate manner
