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The Decline of the City Grid

economist.com

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Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#71

Post by bobthepanda »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #61
bobthepanda wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree. Grids are bad for cars because four way stops are really inefficient at processing them. You'll notice in American suburban planning that there are as few four-way stops as possible inside a subdivision. Non-grids extend the distance of a lot of trips and are thus hostile to slower non-motorized users. Driving an extra 500m is not a big deal for a car but is an additional several minutes for slower…

> Non-grids extend the distance of a lot of trips and are thus hostile to slower non-motorized users. Driving an extra 500m is not a big deal for a car but is an additional several minutes for slower users. I don't believe this is true. In fact iirc it has been proven that if you chose any random two points in a non-grid set up (eg, something like London) then the distance by road you have to travel is on average les…

Grids are certainly better than what I was more referring to, and what is discussed in the article, which is the modernist suburban tree-like structure.

London is not on one fixed grid, but there are certainly grid-like things in many areas, for the simple reasons that

* above 4 ways at an intersection tends to be really poor throughput

* people like right or almost right angles for building construction, and that tends to be reflected in lot lines; acute angles are quite bad

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#72

Post by hgomersall »

brewdad wrote: post #50
tharkun__ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's incompatible with walking. I see the article mentions the same: If you are walking in a modern suburb, “You’re always going out of your way,” he says. It is not only people walking who have to take less direct routes. Buses are more effective when roads are in grids, allowing passengers to get anywhere with just one change. All that's required and normal in lots of Europe is for foot paths that c…

In America this is unacceptable both because suburban dwellers don't want to have people walking near their homes (invasion of privacy) and because developers would prefer to sell and build on as much land as possible. There's no money to be made on "public" land and it lowers the value of the land immediately adjacent to it.

I'm fairly sure municipal, non-road space increases the value of land adjacent to it

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#73

Post by lifefeed »

beej71 wrote: post #5

[freewheeling unplanned thinking-out-loud ahead] I like grids... but I'm not sure why. I live at the edge of the old grid section in my town. West of me, it turns into modern non-grid. Which I don't like. But do I not like it because of the lack of grid? Or because of the new modern wall-to-wall cookie-cutter construction? I look at an old organically-grown city and it's fascinating to me; its ties to the distant pas…

Tucked away in the middle of any urban planning article is a reference to Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". It's a great book that puts into words why certain neighborhoods cities feel alive and fit for humans. From mixed-use buildings to small blocks to sidewalks to parks to landmarks.

I'm not going to say her insights are universal for everyone, but it might help you understand why you like that grid you like.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#74

Post by hgomersall »

anon291 wrote: post #35
SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, grids are not perfect, but they are much much better than modern non-grid. Modern non-grid is not made for people, it is made for cars, and is incompatible with walking. More specifically, it is the result of optimizing for the wrong thing, it optimizes for getting cars from their houses to the highway and back, sacrificing all local connection and mobility in the process.

They're not even made for cars. With the non-grids in many suburbs, you have to drive for more than five minutes just to reach something that ought to be a two minute walk or a 30 second drive. Endless cul-de-sacs and branches make it unfriendly to everything.

Modern best practice is to have permeable neighbourhoods, with lots of active transport routes between nodes. Cul-de-sacs should only be cul-de-sacs for cars, not people.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#75

Post by gpvos »

A thing about North-American cul-de-sac suburbs that I don't understand is why there are no footpaths to take shortcuts between the dead-end streets. That would make them much less hostile to pedestrians, would allow you to visit neighbours more easily, and it seems to me that you don't lose anything. Is it just an oversight or is there some reason for that? It should even increase social safety: always an escape route.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#76

Post by jcranmer »

bee_rider wrote: post #32

How do you even give directions in Chicago? It seems horribly confusing — go down the straight road, once you’ve passed 15 intersections turn left blah blah. No way to keep track of that kind of junk. Boston is much easier to navigate and get direction, go until you hit the triangular intersection, take the left branch, you’ll eventually find a rotary has brushed up on your road, take that etc etc. Each intersection…

It's not true New England directions until you tell someone "turn left where the shop used to be."

But you're not going to give directions as "pass 15 intersections." If you want to get to, say, 55th and Cicero from the south, you'd say get off I-57 at 167th street, turn north onto Cicero, and, well, you can watch the streets count down. A savvy navigator would know that Chicago has 8 blocks to the mile (outside of downtown), so 55th is 14 miles north of 167th, but you don't need to know that: every major mile street will have a stoplight, and the stoplight will inform you which street it is.

Of course, 55th and Cicero is a bad example, since it's the intersection of two major streets (and the business there is a really, really obvious one that you can't possibly miss). If you're off of a minor street, you might instead say something like "it's the second left after Pulaski"--Pulaski is one of the big north-south mile streets, so one would have a rough idea of how far away that is, and you don't need to start counting until after crossing the main mile street.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#77

Post by mbg721 »

The difference between Cincinnati and St. Louis was stark to me; I grew up assuming that "north" meant "vaguely northeast until it gets inconvenient". The idea that a road can just go on in the same direction for miles and miles seemed like a sinister AI trap. Someplace like New Orleans or Montreal where the direction follows a natural feature makes way more sense in my head.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#78

Post by dredmorbius »

nkrisc wrote: post #21
beej71 wrote: post #5

[freewheeling unplanned thinking-out-loud ahead] I like grids... but I'm not sure why. I live at the edge of the old grid section in my town. West of me, it turns into modern non-grid. Which I don't like. But do I not like it because of the lack of grid? Or because of the new modern wall-to-wall cookie-cutter construction? I look at an old organically-grown city and it's fascinating to me; its ties to the distant pas…

You've inspired me as well to ramble about why grids are great. Growing up in Chicago, I have a deep love of the grid. It made sense, it made navigation easy. It made addresses have real meaning . Take the address of the Vic Theater, for example: 3145 N Sheffield. It tells you just about everything you need to know. It tells you that Sheffield is a North/South street. Because it's an odd number it tells you the build…

Try living, working, or shopping on Peachtree in Atlanta sometime.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#79

Post by closeparen »

gpvos wrote: post #75

A thing about North-American cul-de-sac suburbs that I don't understand is why there are no footpaths to take shortcuts between the dead-end streets. That would make them much less hostile to pedestrians, would allow you to visit neighbours more easily, and it seems to me that you don't lose anything. Is it just an oversight or is there some reason for that? It should even increase social safety: always an escape rou…

Some of the more humane subdivisions are built with walking trails e.g. behind the backyards. A developer may or may not feel that they need to spend the extra money for that to sell the houses.

Customers for these very deeply nested cul de sac homes tend to value privacy a lot. They don’t want people they don’t know passing through, and may be even more suspicious of pedestrians than drivers.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#80

Post by [deleted] »

prottog wrote: post #57
nkrisc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've inspired me as well to ramble about why grids are great. Growing up in Chicago, I have a deep love of the grid. It made sense, it made navigation easy. It made addresses have real meaning . Take the address of the Vic Theater, for example: 3145 N Sheffield. It tells you just about everything you need to know. It tells you that Sheffield is a North/South street. Because it's an odd number it tells you the build…

> Now I live in suburbia elsewhere in the country and street numbers are essentially meaningless, except to differentiate buildings on the same street. I've even been on some suburban streets where there was no rule to the numbering scheme at all! Houses next door having radically different numbers, even and odd numbers being on both sides of the same street, etc. Drove me nuts.

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