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The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

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Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

#61

Post by jesterpm »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #31

I wish more cities would compile and publish this information. I grew up in Miami that has a sort of less-structured grid system where avenues are the primary north-south roads and streets are the primary east-west roads. There's a through road every half mile, or numbering-wise every 8 streets or 5 avenues. So if you know this fact, you'll know that SW 47th ave is extremely likely to be a through road until it reach…

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not already in the Municipal Code for the city, since they need a way to maintain consistency. For example, here's the divisions in Renton, which are oddly complicated relative to the size of the city: https://www.codepublishing.com/WA/Renton/#!/Renton09/Renton0...

Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

#62

Post by susiecambria »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #59
retzkek wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure about west. :) Unincorporated addresses in Kane and DuPage Counties do use a reference system based off State & Madison as baseline (although it's been codified based off county and township lines). Eg. 40W100 Keslinger Rd is a bit over 40 miles west of State St.

Those are also called fire addresses, because they were assigned by the fire department rather than the postal service. 6 or 8 decades ago, the post office decided to accept them as official rather than force people to change. They have their own section in the postal addressing standards, under the "Unusual Addressing Situations": https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/pub28apd_004.htm

Thanks for this. . . I've been writing lots of GOTV letters across the country and paying attention to the addresses, rather than simply writing them on the envelopes, help make the process interesting.

I spent 20+ years in Washington, DC so am used to NW, NE, SW, and SE with avenues, numbered streets, flower streets of two syllables, blah blah blah. But I now live in rural Virginia and state routes are the norm.

Your explanation got me to focus more on what and why. And, I learned something, so thank you.

Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

#63

Post by SllX »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #36
tomcam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New York street grid patterns were covered tersely but sufficiently about 60 years ago by legendary cartographer Saul Steinberg: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/kft9cz/a_view_of_t...

Wow, it used to be way easier to park on the street in NYC.

Everything used to be closer together too. The world felt smaller. You could swim to Japan from where Vegas meets the Sea. Life was just better, except for the fact that Hawaii hadn’t been invented yet.

Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

#64

Post by tomcam »

SllX wrote: post #63
rufus_foreman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, it used to be way easier to park on the street in NYC.

Everything used to be closer together too. The world felt smaller. You could swim to Japan from where Vegas meets the Sea. Life was just better, except for the fact that Hawaii hadn’t been invented yet.

As if Hawaii were real

Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

#65

Post by cafard »

mark-r wrote: post #5
ggm wrote: post #2

Many cities could benefit from this exposition. Melbourne has a similar "WTF" moment in its grid alignment.

The interesting part about Minneapolis is that it has two grids. Early development occurred at angles to the Mississippi river, while later development straightened out to N-S and E-W orientation.

Denver has a downtown grid aligned to the SW-NE course of the South Platte, covering I suppose about a square mile, with the rest in a N-S E-W grid.

Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

#66

Post by hypercube33 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #50
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Milwaukee. Downtown Madison is sandwiched between 2 lakes, and most of the city orients North East for the roads that run between them.

This is the correct answer. I mean, yes, Madison is heavily planned. But so is any city you build on an isthmus. You have to heavily plan the layout or it won't work. At the same time they made a north-east flowing layout. Now it may be a "grid" if you rotate a grid 45%, but when someone generally thinks of "grid", they think of a grid oriented in cardinal directions. Obviously, this is not possible in Madison becaus…

Insightful information, and yeah, I incorrectly remembered :)

Another interesting thing not talked a lot about online is that these midwest cities typically have a ton of documented (or not?) underground tunnels. There used to be a cool website for the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) that showed them off. My parents recall walking from the University of MN to further parts downtown where you can transition to skyways and basically never go outside. I guess -40' weather really pushes people to become moles in a sense. I think a lot of big cities also have huge tunnel systems for heating fuel (coal delivery and the like) and other utilities

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