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Fanis Grammenos

WHY THE FUSED GRID STREET PATTERN? – “In the early 2000s, entirely new priorities, along with old ones, were being staked at every corner of the planning universe. A tangled web of interacting variables emerged from these demands; a truly formidable, complex puzzle,” stated Fanis Grammenos, author of Remaking the City Grid, and an urban sustainability thinker

March 9, 2021


“The real urgent task was to convince a Municipality or a developer that this combination of known components worked well and that it produced desirable outcomes. Developers listened to the evidence with one ear while holding the other close to their clients – Sold! But they hesitated, being anxious that the City would not approve such plans; Cities, big and small, had just issued policy reports declaring: ‘cul-de-sacs are no longer allowed in this city because they are disconnected’,” stated Fanis Grammenos.

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“The adaptive nature of cities is exemplified once again, by the self-organizing response of street networks after transformative changes,” wrote Fanis Grammenos, creator of the Fused Grid planning model

February 18, 2021


“While individual roads are normally built to a plan, their collective assembly into a network is retrospectively observed in totality, but never conceived as such—partly because networks grow piecemeal, often in unpredictable ways, and partly because of their time scale, often many decades long. The outcome of all these separate influences resembles a patchwork rather that a neatly woven fabric. Each new addition to the system not only becomes context for the subsequent one, but is also conditioned by factors that emerge in the long interim,’ stated Fanis Grammenos.

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FLASHBACK TO 2006 / DESIGNING COMMUNITIES DIFFERENTLY IN CALGARY, ALBERTA: “Meeting the City’s expectations for rainwater management drove the merger of two innovative concepts in laying out new communities – Water Balance and Fused Grid. Saddlestone was to be the litmus test of their validity and effectiveness,” stated Fanis Grammenos, the innovator who pioneered the Fused Grid Model for compact community design and beneficial uses

February 16, 2021


“Planning, common experience shows, is an act of balancing competing interests, perspectives and priorities. And since interests often waver and priorities shift, the challenge of achieving a balance is forever new. The fused grid model rests on a replicable (but not repetitive) 16 hectare superblock, a cellular unit , which displaces simplistic geometry for organic order. Translated into a neighborhood street pattern, this means shorter, skinnier, end-of-line local streets. Simple math shows that the closer this organic geometry is followed the more land becomes available for beneficial uses,” stated Fanis Grammenos.

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