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Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Probably a combination of the two. I do remember reading where some changes were made because of urban combat after the French Revolution. Widened main avenues to make it easier to get troops down, so it makes sense they would have thought of the other as well. Rapid expansion always plays a role in screwing up a layout.
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It was during the reign of Napoleon III. George Eugène, Baron Haussmann, was the urban planner and civil servant who redesigned Paris under the Emperor's direction. The wide crisscrossing avenues were partially designed to faciliate troop movements and to prevent the easy barricading of narrower streets during the city's all-too common riots.
Most older cities have narrow winding streets because they evolved to fill the geography of their environment. From the Renaissance through the Enlightenment to the modern bureaucratic era, in the Western World older communities tend to get torn down and planned grids put in their place. There has actually been a fair amount written in sociological and architectural literature, usually by leftists, about this as reflecting Western culture's desire to enforce itself on and control nature.
In the US, where most cities filled relatively empty space, the grids were there from the beginning. There are only some older cities in the Northeastern that don't share that legacy (at least in their old downtowns), such as Quebec City, Annapolis and the southern tip of Manhattan.
A fair number of Iraqi cities, especially those in the so-called Sunni Triangle that enjoyed huge growth in the Ba'athist era, are planned developments and don't look like typical older Middle Eastern cities.