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the city to serve as reference points for the definite determination of street locations and for all public and private local surveys. 2. The accurate determination of the locations and elevations of these and other monuments and bench marks in reference to a single general system of coordinates and in reference to the United States Government bench. 3. As a means of accomplishing these ends, an accurate geodetic triangulation of the district, supplemented by the necessary precise traverse work and precise leveling, all fully checked and compensated for errors.

(b) The existing local surveys and records need to be tied into the accurate framework thus established, and in cases which show deficiencies or discrepancies beyond a reasonable and carefully defined standard of accuracy, they need to be gradually, in due turn, re-surveyed and re-plotted.

(c) Complete topographical maps, based upon the framework first described, should be prepared upon some uniform system beginning in those sections where public works are immediately contemplated and gradually extended so as to cover the whole area into which the city's growth is likely to spread.

In the facts which would be gathered in the above process, and only in such facts, can a safe basis be found for plans that will provide the most economical and effective layout of new streets, sewers, parks, water system -- in short for a city plan that will minimize the total draft on the taxpayers for public works and give the maximum results for money expended.

Technical Procedure

The actual steps of technical procedure called for, in addition to the present routine work of the Bureau of Surveys, appear to be about as listed below. I omit at this point any consideration of the method of deciding on the plans for future improvements -- the city planning proper, which would be based on the surveys -- or of the procedure for enforcing any part of a city plan when adopted, and consider only the work of recording and mapping.

The steps that are mentioned last are more or less dependent upon those mentioned first, for any given area of the city, but the several steps of the work would be carried on more or less simultaneously, and some of the results would become available for use at once. 1. The establishment of reference points by triangulation and precise traversing and leveling throughout the

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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910