Leonardo da Vinci planned an ideal city with separated roads and waterways.
After plague outbreaks in Milan, Leonardo developed urban-planning proposals that separated different kinds of movement and addressed sanitation. His plans placed pedestrian routes and transportation routes at different levels or in different areas, while canals could support trade, drainage, and the movement of goods. The proposals were never built as a complete city.
Leonardo’s ideal-city concept was not simply an architectural drawing for a palace or fortress. It was a systems plan linking public health, traffic, water management, and urban organization. Historians often connect the work with Milan in the late fifteenth century, although the exact circumstances and intended scale of the proposals remain subjects of interpretation.