I felt this visiting Ottawa. I was aware of things being in blocks, but never that the blocks themselves were so comparatively huge that you could see why cars

I felt this visiting Ottawa. I was aware of things being in blocks, but never that the blocks themselves were so comparatively huge that you could see why cars are so depended upon. The amount of spread felt impossibly huge yet at the same time, it didn't really lend to a feeling of openness. You were just dealing with wider roads and taller buildings. Compare it to my later years in Barcelona, which has a grid of its own, and those are much smaller. You can still walk the breadth of the city in just over 90 minutes or so; cycling it in much less.