The format chosen by the Commissioners was a rectilinear grid, or "gridiron": straight streets and avenues intersecting each other at right angles. Legal historian Hendrick Hartog writes that their choice was resonant with the political values of the country, which only recently gained independence from Great Britain. According to Hartog, the grid was: "...the antithesis of a utopian or futuristic plan." It extolled ordinary everyday life, and emphasized that "government ought not to act in such a way as to create inequality of special privilege." The Plan's "hidden agenda" was "reconstruction of the natural environment to fit the requirements of republican authority." Even though "[the Commissioners wrote as if all they cared about was protecting the investments of land developers and maintaining government-on-the-cheap ... the plan ... however, served to transform space into an expression of public philosophy," which emphasized equality and uniformity. "In a city shaped by rectangular blocks, all structures and activities would look roughly the same. Individual distinctions, whether cultural, charitable, economic, or whatever, would have to find their place within a fixed, republican spatial organization."