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City street orientations around the world

geoffboeing.com

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Re: City street orientations around the world

#81

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

listenallyall wrote: post #80
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You have a point. However, I am new enough to Philly and have explored those areas little enough that I'm not sure I can be a good judge of them.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#82

Post by xapata »

smogcutter wrote: post #78
muddyrivers wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They may have torn down a bunch of buildings to pave the boulevards, but in between it's a wonderful mix of little streets. Best of both worlds. Get lost in the neighborhood and eventually you'll stumble back onto a boulevard where you can get your bearings.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#83

Post by xapata »

ghaff wrote: post #28
fredley wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, even with navigation apps central London is a nightmare...

Like a lot of automated things, navigation apps are pretty much designed for the 95% case. Especially somewhere like a city, they fall down on the lack of instructions like "You want to be getting over into the right hand lane soon. You'll be making a turn up at $LANDMARK in a couple of minutes." Or, in London, which of the 5 streets coming off the circle do you want to be taking exactly?

Google Maps recently started using landmarks. Yesterday it told me to turn right after the IHOP.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#84

Post by imaoreo »

Zaskoda wrote: post #79

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.

Washington too, a good chunk of our streets are diagonal.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#85

Post by clarkmoody »

robbick wrote: post #17
fredley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US grid cities are really easy to navigate by car, but at the expense of pedestrians. Old cities like London are easy to navigate on foot, but hard to navigate by car.

Agreed - IMHO favoring the pedestrian is the correct decision

> decision

The thing about London and other old cities is that no one decided. The layout grew up over centuries in an organic manner, well before automobiles. More modern cities that experienced the majority of their growth in the age of automobiles also grew during the age of centralized urban planning.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#86

Post by ghaff »

iammiles wrote: post #76
ghaff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am (mostly sadly) pretty well aquainted with Vegas. Unfortunately, the monorail/tram systems are pretty disjoint. And even if it just involves walking through a casino can still be quite a hike.

And I, by no means mind walking, though there was the time I went to Vegas on a business trip and was on crutches with no weight on foot allowed. Though the high point was that a porter showed me how to use the crutches more effectively; he was an (aspiring?) ballet dancer who had apparently spent more than his share of time on crutches :-)

Re: City street orientations around the world

#87

Post by TomMarius »

ghaff wrote: post #86
iammiles wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am (mostly sadly) pretty well aquainted with Vegas. Unfortunately, the monorail/tram systems are pretty disjoint. And even if it just involves walking through a casino can still be quite a hike. And I, by no means mind walking, though there was the time I went to Vegas on a business trip and was on crutches with no weight on foot allowed. Though the high point was that a porter showed me how to use the crutches mor…

What is the secret of crutches?

Re: City street orientations around the world

#88

Post by xkgt »

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).

I had the same experience in Macau. The entire Cotai strip is just 3 blocks between Old Taipa and Coloane island. But you wouldn't consider crossing it on foot.

Re: City street orientations around the world

#89

Post by quickthrower2 »

bostonpete wrote: post #31
quickthrower2 wrote: post #27

Sydney would be interesting to add, being a harbour city. With weird stuff like it can take a 10km trip by land to get somewhere just 1km away "as the crow flies"

Sydney is there though....

Oops. Need to get my retinas checked.
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