We do not know too much about the man known as Hippodamus of Miletus. What little we do know of him is from Aristotle’s “Politics”, where he was labeled a strange and eccentric man. According to our best estimations, Hippodamus lived from 498-408 BC. He has widely been credited as the inventor and father of formal city planning, and the system of dividing up cities into different parts for different purposes. While Hippodamus was not a statesman, he did theorize on political topics, such as the building of cities. It was here that the earliest ideas of urban planning were sparked.