The uptown trend of Manhattan, allegorized as an inexorable parade of destiny on its "march uptown", refers to the northward socioeconomic real estate trend toward Uptown, a long-standing historical pattern from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Beginning with New Amsterdam at the island's southern tip, European colonial and later American settlement, especially in the century or so after the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded continually in a common direction.