Subject: RE: circular cities in georgia??? (fwd)
Date: Nov 13, 2000 @ 13:53
Author: David Mark (David Mark <dmark@...>)
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many circular city limits in South carolina as well!
Go to http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl/
scroll down to the botton, and search for Estill, SC
click on the "map" link in the result
click "on" for "City Labels" and click redraw,
zoom out by a factor of two to see some more...

David

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 07:38:43 -0500
From: Fred Broome <fbroome@...>
To: David Mark <dmark@...>
Subject: RE: circular cities in georgia???

Hi David,

Back in the days of my youth as a grad student at Univ. of Ga. we had it
described to us. How much of this is true, I do not know. Seems that it
was much easier to say the city limits of the town went x-miles from a
specific corner of the main building in town, usually the county courthouse
or city hall and usually from the cornerstone of that building. Remember,
meets and bounds was the common method of surveying. This seemed to avoid
conflict with property ownership. Believe me, the rationality was not based
on von Thuenen or even Ricardo's land Rent theory, if anything, it was a
convience. You should find quite a few of the small towns with that type of
original boundary, not just in GA, but in SC as well. Call up TIGER mapper
and look at Sylvania, GA (just up-river from Savannah) and then back out
until you can see SC. Notice the pattern is there as well. You can see
this on old U.S.G.S. maps as well.

It would be interesting to see how far this pattern goes North and West.
Probably worth a cultural geography paper.

I'll see if I have anyother info in my old notes or papers and forward it.

Best regards,

Fred

-----Original Message-----
From: David Mark [mailto:dmark@...]
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2000 6:03 PM
To: Fred Broome
Subject: circular cities in georgia???



Fred, great to see you in Savannah!

Someone pointed out two cities/villages in georgia that have circular city
limits, and wondered if there were more. I decided to search on the
TIGER map server and found lots of them, such as those listed below.

But, do you know the history of why this unusual yet highly rational (cf.
Von Thuenen!) form of city limit is so common in georgia while rare in the
rest of the world??

David

Leslie
De Soto
Plains
Smithville (incomplete circle)
Parrott
Coleman
Shellman
Dawson
Bronwood
Sasser
Leesbirg
Warwick
Arabi (has rectangle attached)
Rebecca
Jacksonville
Denton
Surrency
Midway
Darien (partial)
Screven
Braxton
Ambrose
Ty Ty
Enigma
Willacoochee
...