141–150 of 212 posts
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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.
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Look at how human scale everything is, even the pedestrian underpass under the road. By contrast in the US, even public transit has to be built at massive, oppressive scales, with pedestrian walkways soaring multiple stories above the road: https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg . Awful.
the silver line is some of the worst urban planning of all time. some of the stations (loudon gateway) are literally only accessible by car
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.…
Look at how human scale everything is, even the pedestrian underpass under the road. By contrast in the US, even public transit has to be built at massive, oppressive scales, with pedestrian walkways soaring multiple stories above the road: https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg . Awful.
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There is a view held by some that they actually decrease safety by providing somewhere for undesirables to loiter, or a means of escape after committing crime, or simply attract more foot traffic to an area than a cul-de-sac therfore increasing the chance of opportunistic crime. I suspect this is a situation where the benefits of the shortcuts to society may be greater than the possible downsides to the nearby homeow…
>...or simply attract more foot traffic to an area than a cul-de-sac therfore increasing the chance of opportunistic crime. I love this reasoning: make my own neighborhood so unpleasant to walk in that nobody will, not even me!
[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…
There were likely finer details, but you didn't need to know them to get around.
I've had people say that such a system is boring, or that it robs a city of its history. In my books, boring is a lot better than asking a dozen people how to get to some obscure named roads. Historic names are also pointless when virtually no one recognizes or looks up the significance of the road name, and when they do ... well let's just say the heroes of a century ago are controversial figures today. Besides, my home town did name the major roads. They simply weren't so abundant that people lost track of all of the names.
But the new subdivisions ... those were a shock to navigate through. Not only was the grid disrupted, but virtually all of the streets were minor variations of the subdivision's name (thus very easy to confuse).
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.…
Check out Stevenage in the UK. It ain't no paradise. It has what appears to be identical segregated cycleways and has done for 60+ years now ( https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/wp-content/uploads/... ), yet cycle usage is less than 3% despite the town being literally designed around and built with cycleways from day 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage
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you know what else is a tree with dead ends? The thousands of suburban cul-de-sacs throughout the US. It makes me wonder if there’s an opportunity to rework them into something other than houses.
FYI, plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac. It means bottom-of-the-bag in French, so the plural form would be bottoms-of-the-bag. Like the plural of sibling-in-law is not sibling-in-laws. Worthless fact of the day!
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…
Also, on the topic of North American cul-de-sac suburbs, I made a Twitter bot that is working its way through every census-designated cul-de-sac in America. Here's a good example of one with pedestrian access: https://twitter.com/culdesacbot1/status/1604474398442156033
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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 lik…
>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. Jacobs is really interesting. My one caveat is that I think a lot of people who applaud her helping to block Moses' highway plans for Washington Square Park would probably be less enthusiastic about her support for what was effectively community self-determination. I suspect many would call…
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.…
> 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?
They just do. And they do it more easily because they don’t have to fight car traffic to do it.
> If a doctor is called in to an emergency, walking or biking is too slow. How do they get to the case?
In America you’re looking at a 20+ minute drive for any physician so they are already at the hospital or it takes just as long if not longer to drive to the hospital in a typical American layout. It’s not an issue.