The Manhattan Project

"  Despite constant improvisation, the outcome proved to be one of the most skillful jobs of town planning ever seen.  The town itself was a narrow strip less than one mile wide and six miles long, following a major ridge and crisscrossed by small ridges.  The original development was designed for three thousand cemesto-type, permanent homes.  Later thousands of prefabricated houses were added.  There were shipped to Oak Ridge in prefabricated sections, complete with walls, floors, room partitions, interior wiring and plumbing.  Even furniture was placed in the sections before shipping.  Most of the houses were factory built in Indiana, and by late 1943, the roads leading southward to Tennessee had become congested by a constant stream of trailer trucks, each carrying a piece of house which, with one side temporarily covered by canvas and some furniture already placed, resembled an oversized doll house.

Since time was too short for conventional building, new methods had to be devised.  Detroit’s assembly-line techniques were adopted, and construction was divided into separate operations, each performed by a specialized crew of workmen.  The system proved so efficient that workers were soon completing a house every two hours and turning them over for occupancy at a rate of 30 to 40 a day

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Despite this, Oak Ridge was not divided into a monotonous grid, with right-angle streets going in one direction from 1 to 100 and in the other from A to Z, but was designed to take advantage of the hills’ contours.  The streets followed the natural curves of the terrain without ever becoming too steep.  Shopping centers and schools were designed within easy reach of residential areas; each neighborhood had ready access to all services and facilities.  "

Citation: Stephane Groueff, "Manhattan Project, The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb," 1967

Letter to Black Oak Ridge, TN resident purchasing their land by immanent domain 

Additional References:
http://ltc4940.blogspot.com/2008/09/oak-ridge-tn.html