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The same type of opposition resurfaced three centuries later in the work of Lavedan, who suggested that towns could be split into two categories: “spontaneous towns, born of chance and which grew up gradually, and artificial towns, created in a single day by the will of one man”ssss1. In the first case, he considered that towns “left to chance, or to nature, the task of grouping the component elements around the generating element” (road, watercourse, relief, etc.), while artificial towns were “constructed following a predetermined plan”. He added that the latter represent “the specific object of study of a history of urban architecture: not always works of beauty, but always works of art, or in other terms, intentional creations of human ingenuity”ssss1 (Lavedan 1926a, p. 5). Lavedan established a hierarchy of plans based on their independence with respect to the natural dispositions of the host site and on their geometric complexity: from the “inorganic village, in which dwellings seem to have sprung up at random” to “the checkerboard plan, with a grid pattern which is now the boast of many cities of the New World, from Buenos Aires to Chicago”ssss1(Lavedan 1926a, p. 31). The artificial form as a work of art, particularly the regular geometric plan, was seen as a product of human rationality forging a structure with the capacity to slow the decay of forms under the influences of time and nature (ssss1). Thus, while M. Poëte emphasized the role of natural sites and of the location of towns within a network of transport arteries in the context of urban planning, P. Lavedan developed an esthetic vision independent of geographic realities. This approach left an indelible mark on the study of urban morphology, both in architecture and archeology.