Transgressing the grid: adventures on (and off) Manhattan island

Abstract

Philip Kay's text gives a biographical account of his love-hate relationship with the Manhattan street grid. His series of personal anecdotes reads like a list of offences; Manhattan's orderly system of streets and avenues seems to dare its inhabitants to defy its authority, and the specificity of its locations creates lasting images and memories (from the minutes of the jury). Winner of the Urban Omnibus essay competition 2012 to mark the bicentenary of the Commissioners' Plan for New York (1811), in the category of original non-fiction writing inspired by New York's street grid as "paradigm, rubric or muse for urban life".