Hiroshima City- Burning Ash to Metropolis is a speech by Tadatoshi Akiba who was mayor of Hiroshima from 1999 to 2011. He may or may not be the mayor described in the anecdote. In the speech, he quoted Professor Nakatani of Waseda University as saying the planning of a city can be traced to a city's history. He then goes on to say that the redeveloped city's roads are laid out in a grid, unlike modern Japanese city planning and the un-redeveloped portions of the city. He also refers to the Peace Boulevard, a 100m wide structure. It was created during WW2 as a fire break, but the people of the city decided not to re-develop the area because many involved would have died from the atomic bombing. The mayor of a city may not be unbiased about their city, with regards to how well-organized it is, but I am confident that the biggest bias he would have is to telling the truth about its history.