The Decline of the City Grid • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#201

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 11:31 PM UTC

Kon-Peki wrote: post #173

dghlsakjg wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utah, thanks largely to the LDS church, has pretty much the exact same grid naming system for every town in the state. It's a bit boring since all streets are numerical, but you could never get lost if you understood the system, even in pre-gps days.

Are you familiar with the history and why they did it? SLC is a grid of squares, which seems somewhat unusual for American grid-based cities. But then, I went and zoomed in on Nauvoo, IL and it has the exact same squared grid, quite possibly even the same size squares. But if you look at the 3 cities on the Iowa side of the river - Burlington, Fort Madison and Keokuk - they also have pretty close to that same grid. D…

It’s not just the grid. It’s that the naming system is identical as well. The blocks are also exceptionally large to accommodate urban farming, and the streets wide to accommodate being able to turn a tram of horses. I’m not sure if Navoo was planned according to the grid or not. From looking at the names, they haven’t retained the naming scheme.

Just about every town in Utah is centered around the intersection of Center and Main. Every other street is a numerical reference to that intersection. So E 100 South Is the street running parallel to center street 1 block south, to the east of Main. There is an E 100 South in just about every town in the state.

For the history look up the Plat of Zion by Joseph Smith. 99pi has a great episode about it.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#202

Post by msla » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 1:52 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #194

msla wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have roads where motor vehicles aren't allowed, but have exceptions for ambulances in emergencies. So doctors won't be allowed to drive to the hospital in emergencies. That kind of thing kills people.

Cars kill people. You're focusing on minor, insignificant details and creating an environment where more people die than otherwise would. How many people die at the hospital waiting for a doctor? You know they have attending physicians and emergency room staff who work there right? > So doctors won't be allowed to drive to the hospital in emergencies. You might as well say "so doctors will be stuck in traffic jams on…

Your shifting of the focus concedes all of my points. Thank you.

Also:

> You know they have attending physicians and emergency room staff who work there right?

They don't do anesthesia, they don't do surgery, they are, in general, not specialists.

Don't try to make points in a realm you know nothing about.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#203

Post by msla » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #200

msla wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't what I'm talking about. When doctors get called in to hospitals for emergencies, they travel in their own cars. Is that really unknown around here? If it is, none of you are competent to decide who needs a car and how cities should be designed.

You think that emergency room doctors go home to wait between patients? On call docs (the ones that would be coming to the hospital) are the specialists that other doctors call to assist after the emergent issue is handled. A 6 minute worst case scenario drive time is perfectly acceptable. There are hospitals in the states where it will take you longer than 6 minutes to walk to the ED from another location in the hos…

> On call docs (the ones that would be coming to the hospital) are the specialists that other doctors call to assist after the emergent issue is handled.

Not always. This might be true in larger hospitals, but I have personal experience in small towns where, yes, someone will get called in to handle an emergency.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#204

Post by msla » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

twelvechairs wrote: post #8

The big recent exemplar of street layout for a new place is Houten in the netherlands [0] which is basically focussed on a train station and walkable town square at the centre with a ring road at the edge. Roads are a 'soft grid' for pedestrians and cyclists but stopped up for cars making the car network more of a tree with dead ends rather than a grid. And making road speeds slow at the centre and fast at the edges.…

And all of this discussion proves that it isn't livable unless you're young and healthy.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#205

Post by fmajid » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 10:15 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #158

rayiner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houten is just 50 km from Amsterdam, while Tysons is 25 km from DC. Both are distinct urban areas within a larger urban sprawl: 4.5 million people in 1,400 square miles for DC, 7 million people in 2,400 square miles for the Randstad.

One look at Google maps tells me they are nowhere close to comparable. Houten is surrounded by farms and cows, next to Utrect which has a population of half a million. Tysons is next to a ring road for DC, and the greater DC-Arlington-Alexandria metro area has 6.6M.

Having lived in Paris, London, Tokyo, Amsterdam and San Francisco, it’s striking how quickly you go from urban to rural in the Randstad. It takes at least an hour of driving in Paris to get to the same as 5 minutes out of Amsterdam. And of course US cities are less densely populated because the country has land to spare, why would they?

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#206

Post by fmajid » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

kqr wrote: post #182

msla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Roads are a 'soft grid' for pedestrians and cyclists but stopped up for cars How do emergency vehicles get in and out? If a doctor is called in to an emergency, walking or biking is too slow. How do they get to the case?

Proper bicycle roads are ideal for emergency vehicles, because bicycles are easy to lift out of the way and then they are perfectly clear.

The Dutch bicycle road network is completely separate from the car/truck/motorcycle one and cars physically can’t travel on them.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#207

Post by fmajid » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

Also worth mentioning, Florence Lipsky’s book San Francisco: The Grid Meets the Hills, about how the grid was imposed on some of the most unsuitable topography for it.

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#208

Post by cafard » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #113

jcoder wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houten has a population of 50,000. Plenty of American cities much larger than that have the sort of human-scale features and transit you’re describing—they’re all over Portland, OR.

The place I linked (McLean/Tyson’s Corner) has about 50,000 people.

Public transport in Tyson's Corner, or the Metro anyway, is very much an afterthought. The original plans for the Washington area metro ended well short of Tyson's

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#209

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

Armisael16 wrote: post #124

rayiner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The place I linked (McLean/Tyson’s Corner) has about 50,000 people.

The place you linked is an outer station in the broader Washington DC metro system. Millions of people live here; trying to view McLean or Tyson’s in isolation is insanity. It’s big because lots of people transit through; the bridges are high because they go over interstate 66. It’s big because because one of the main purposes of the station is to serve as a transfer point from cars to light rail. Would you suggest t…

[deleted]

Re: The Decline of the City Grid

#210

Post by ericmay » Sat, Dec 24, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #202

ericmay wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars kill people. You're focusing on minor, insignificant details and creating an environment where more people die than otherwise would. How many people die at the hospital waiting for a doctor? You know they have attending physicians and emergency room staff who work there right? > So doctors won't be allowed to drive to the hospital in emergencies. You might as well say "so doctors will be stuck in traffic jams on…

Your shifting of the focus concedes all of my points. Thank you. Also: > You know they have attending physicians and emergency room staff who work there right? They don't do anesthesia, they don't do surgery, they are, in general, not specialists. Don't try to make points in a realm you know nothing about.

> They don't do anesthesia, they don't do surgery, they are, in general, not specialists.

When was the last time you were in a hospital ER or ICU? I've been there off and on for the last few weeks and months. Broadly saying that physicians that specialize in anesthesia, surgery, or other specialties are not staffed at a hospital or emergency room is factually incorrect.

It's also not a problem in the first place with the context in this thread. If a specialist was required to be X minutes away from the hospital incase they were on call they'd live or be within X minutes away from the hospital regardless of the mode of transportation. On top of that, any emergency would necessitate emergency hospital staff being on-site to stabilize the patient while a specialist arrives and reviews the case anyway. I bet more doctors die every year in car crashes going to emergency calls like the one you are conjuring up than patients who die as a result of a doctor being late.

Doubling down on this irrelevant point is bizarre, and even more so when you fail to imagine that maybe we could find a solution for this non-problem anyway.