City street orientations around the world • Hacker News Board

Re: City street orientations around the world

#71

Post by isostatic » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

pitt1980 wrote: post #57

onion2k wrote: post #5

Really interesting. I suspect there's something about the political climate more than the age of the city that dictates the orientation of the roads. Where societies where strongly controlled by small group of leaders (religious leaders, monarchs, city planners, etc) the streets ended up much more coherent. Where cities grew organically as needed the layouts are less coherent. Also, what happened in Charlotte?!

I was curious about Charlotte as well, best I could find: ----- The streets of most newer American cities follow very clear East-West and North-South grid patterns, but not here. The streets of Charlotte have some of the most unusual patterns in the world. Our city may seem like a new city, but it actually has a very rich history of Native Americans, famous battles, and gold. We were founded in 1768 (and officially d…

> Our city may seem like a new city .... We were founded in 1768

So yes then. My mother-in-law's house is older than that.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#72

Post by bonyt » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

Cool. Out of curiosity, I ran the Jupyter notebook[1] on the five boroughs of NYC + Nassau County on Long Island, and got the following graphic: https://i.imgur.com/LyxP6yQ.png

I'm a bit surprised by the results, since Nassau in particular doesn't have anything resembling a county-wide grid system that I know of. I like the diagram for Queens, since it technically has a grid[2], although it shifts in places to be at a different angle, like Long Island City / Hunters Point, which were originally their own cities with their own design plans. The diagram for Brooklyn is really interesting as well.

[1]: https://github.com/gboeing/osmnx-examples/blob/master/notebo...

[2]: https://stevemorse.org/census/changes/QueensFormat.htm

EDIT: Perhaps scale is a bit deceiving here. The original had every graph on a different scale, so I modified it to have a fixed scale instead, which shows how disproportionately organized Manhattan is compared to the other boroughs / LI: https://i.imgur.com/l3yV1sY.png

Re: City street orientations around the world

#73

Post by danesparza » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

This is incredibly misleading. Atlanta proper only accounts for a small percentage of the roads in the Atlanta metro area -- but it's the only place that actually has roads on a grid. The rest of Atlanta has roads that go in every damn direction (and would probably look a lot more like Charlotte if plotted)

Re: City street orientations around the world

#74

Post by mfringel » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

bartkappenburg wrote: post #39

I followed his jupyter notebook [0] and recreated it for all big dutch cities: https://imgur.com/a/EdvDrZY Lelystad is very symmetric! [0]: https://github.com/gboeing/osmnx-examples/blob/master/notebo...

Very nice!

I didn't see it on the image, but maybe it got cropped out. Did you give credit to the original author for the code/idea?

Re: City street orientations around the world

#75

Post by llimllib » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #46

Redwood City, California has a strange mix of street grids. There's a roughly NSEW grid downtown, with separate grids to the northwest and southeast angled about 45 degrees. The grids meet in confusing jumbles of triangles: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4861576,-122.2356476,15z It's easy to see where the 45 degree grids came from: one parallels El Camino and the railroad tracks, the other parallels Middlefield Road…

Here's the road orientation graphic for Redwood City: https://i.imgur.com/iueLofq.png

Re: City street orientations around the world

#76

Post by iammiles » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #34

bfirsh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from London and lived in the US for a bit. I struggled to navigate. I think it is because I navigate by modelling the shape of the streets. When all the streets are the same shape, that subconscious system stops working. I also tend to find I underestimate distances in grid systems. I think it’s because in European cities I estimate distance by the number of distinct shapes I can remember on the way there. In a…

You sort of need to know the [scale of] grid in question. In a similar vein, I find the Las Vegas Strip is incredibly disorienting with respect to distance. You're used to buildings being of size approximately X and in Vegas the casinos are 10X. So you think--oh, that's just a couple of buildings away. 30 minutes later you're still walking (in the sweltering heat).

Tip for your next visit: The monorail runs on the east side of the the strip and stops off every few buildings or so. There's also a separate free tram that runs between Bellagio, Vdara, and Aria.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#77

Post by madcaptenor » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

blatherard wrote: post #13

smcl wrote: post #8

Anyone know why Philadelphia has a kinda NSEW orientation like the other cities but rotated ever so slightly? Manhattan is similar and it makes sense (they are aligned with the island itself), but Philadelphia is so close to the actual compass points and not aligned with anything really else.

As I understand it, the grid plan originated in Philadelphia in a stretch of land between the Delaware and Schyulkhill rivers. This portion, which is now generally called Center City, has a grid that aligns itself with the Delaware which runs at that point a little East of North. The rest of the city grew up extending that grid.

Also, that particular point was picked, I believe, because it was the shortest distance between the Delaware and the Schuylkill. (Well, except for a few miles downriver where the Schuylkill flows into the Delaware, but South Philly was basically swamps back then.) See for example https://hiddencityphila.org/2015/08/courtyard-compass-reveal...

Re: City street orientations around the world

#78

Post by smogcutter » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

muddyrivers wrote: post #58

noelwelsh wrote: post #2

Funnily enough I find organic street layouts easier to navigate as a tourist than grid systems. In an organic layout there are central roads that go to places of interest and the smaller streets flow to the central roads. In a grids all the roads look the same (they have the same size for example) so I often can't work out how I'm oriented and wandering around doesn't necessarily lead to anywhere interesting. I also…

I have similar experiences in both systems. Growing up in China, it is easy for me to navigate in US cities. Beijing is primarily of grid system. The first time I went to Europe, I got quite lost in the city (Madrid). The second time was in Paris. I got some free time. So I walked around aimlessly in some neighborhoods, away from the popular tourist sites, appreciating the beauty, the history and the local people I r…

Funnily enough, Paris isn't a particularly organic layout. It was centrally redesigned and "modernized" starting in the reign of Napoleon III. For sure it was designed with horses and pedestrians in mind, so very different from most US cities, but also different from someplace like central Prague, etc.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#79

Post by Zaskoda » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

I live in Seattle. There's a famous story about how we ended up with half of our streets running along one grid that was N,S,E,W and another grid that was aligned with the water front. As they built the city, these two patterns merged to create a total fuster cluck.

I am extremely confident that the graph for Seattle is incorrect.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#80

Post by listenallyall » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #59

noelwelsh wrote: post #2

Funnily enough I find organic street layouts easier to navigate as a tourist than grid systems. In an organic layout there are central roads that go to places of interest and the smaller streets flow to the central roads. In a grids all the roads look the same (they have the same size for example) so I often can't work out how I'm oriented and wandering around doesn't necessarily lead to anywhere interesting. I also…

Optimising for tourists is pretty lame, they don't have to live there. In my opinion, I think a balance between the approaches works well. I'm in Philadelphia. I really appreciate that anyone can tell me some event is at "14th and Locust" and I know how to get there without directions. At the same time, roads like Ben Franklin Parkway are wide and open enough, with multiple courtyards along its length, that it opens…

You live in Center City. The rest of Philadelphia has a very organic layout. Can you get to Frankford & Castor without directions? Germantown & Chelten? Anywhere in NE Philly?