It's easy to make fun of urban dreams, but it's worth recalling that all American cities started from scratch. Savannah, Ga.—a more evocative name than Waterfront, which sounds like a Florida retirement community—was planned by Gen. James Ogelthorpe, the founder of the Georgia colony. He devised a pattern of wards, or neighborhoods, each with a central square around which stood a church, a storehouse, and other public buildings. The squares were linked by avenues, the through traffic being diverted to secondary streets that ran between the wards; parallel to the river, the wards were separated by what became tree-lined boulevards. The idea of directing urban growth in predetermined increments was entirely novel. It not only has worked well in practice but has produced the beautiful city of squares that we know today. This engraving shows the initial four wards, which grew to 26 by the time of the Civil War.