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I'm a huge fan of the winding maze like structure of cities built upon the old. It's nice to be able to wander and explore. I suppose blank slate cities (like

I'm a huge fan of the winding maze like structure of cities built upon the old. It's nice to be able to wander and explore. I suppose blank slate cities (like most in America) are a lot more convenient to navigate though.

YorkshireSeason 8y ago
I could imagine that the main factor influencing how "wander and explore"-friendly a city is, might not be age or evolved-vs-planned, but rather whether it is car-friendly or not (i.e. the degree of density). Car-friendliness can be by design or might evolve.
vvillena 8y ago
American cities aren't optimized for navigation, they are optimized for sales. A parcel of terrain is easier to sell when it's not that different from the one alongside it. Selling a house is also easier when there's no quirky features or strange floorplans.
- eesmith 8y ago
  I think it's hard to look at a grid system and say that it's optimized for sales. US urban planning in the late 1800s and early 1900s "emphasized a grid plan, partly out of extensive reliance on foot, horse and streetcars for transportation. In such earlier urban development, alleys were included to allow for deliveries of soiled supplies, such as coal, to the rear of houses which are now heated by electricity, piped natural gas or oil." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_end_(street)#Suburban_use_and_benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_end_(street)#Suburban_use... Sure, you might argue that people purchased those houses because of the benefits of the grid system, and hence (indirectly) optimized for sales. But that same Wikipedia page points out that post-war construction in the US emphasized cul-de-sac and crescent streets. > "Real estate developers prefer culs-de-sac because they allow builders to fit more houses into oddly shaped tracts of land and facilitate building to the edges of rivers and property lines.[10] They also choose these discontinuous network patterns of cul-de-sac and loop streets because of the often significant economies in infrastructure costs compared to the grid plan. ... The desirability of the cul-de-sac street type among home buyers is implied by the evidence that they often pay up to a 20% premium for a home on such a street, according to one study.[10] This could be because there is considerably less passing traffic, resulting in less noise and reduced actual or perceived risk, increasing the sense of tranquility." In other words, cul-de-sacs optimize sales, not grid patterns, and "quirky features or strange floorplans" of non-grid plats don't seem to be a problem - quite the opposite. I believe Joseph Smith's 'Plat of the City of Zion' influence on Salt Lake City's shows that the grid system of SLC was not specifically optimized for sales, and indeed was partially designed for navigation. At the very least, you know were you are with respect to the Temple.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    Cul-de-sacs decrease criminality too. If you go down a cul-de-sacs to do recon, you look out of place.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      The Wikipedia page has several paragraphs on "this disputed issue", describing both pro- and con- views. One cited paper concludes "relative affluence and the number of neighbours has a greater effect than either being on a cul-de-sac or being on a through street".
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        so if living on a cul-de-sac predicts for relative affluence, it may be a proxy for lower crime?
        eesmith 8y ago
        ... no? At least, that's not what I inferred from the Wikipedia article. If you want to dig into the details, the report is at https://spacesyntax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Hillier-Sahbaz_An-evidence-based-approach_010408.pdf https://spacesyntax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Hillier-S... . A quick search finds the following in the conclusion section: > Cul de sacs or grids? > The principle that larger the numbers of dwellings on the street segment reduces the risk of burglary, applies both to cul de sacs and grid like layouts. Small number of dwellings in a cul de sac are vulnerable, especially if the dwelling are affluent.
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      That doesn't compute for me - at least not in an urban environment. You're safest on the street where there are the most people; and criminals aren't going to try to break into a building if there's an audience. High foot traffic leads to safe cities. Cul-de-sacs discourage foot traffic.
      - 8y ago
rayiner 8y ago
I’m a huge fan of grid cities. If you look at Iowa, you see a bunch of towns of 3,000 people laid out in a grid. It’s a testament to the virtue of the people.
- provolone 8y ago
  It is nice when they throw in some diagonals and roundabouts for variety. Gives you more options when moving across the city.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Diagonals can be okay used sparingly, but roundabouts destroy traffic flow the way Americans do them (with lights).
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      We don't do them that way. In my area, roundabouts are put in where traffic occasionally bursts from one direction, and where traffic levels are low. Because they quit working once traffic increases, because it can be impossible to get on if there's continuous flow from another direction. Maybe the lights reported are because the roundabout has outlived its usefulness? A stopgap before ripping it out.
      - umichguy 8y ago
        Horses for courses....roundabouts are great for low to medium traffic conditions. Sometimes the lights are there for times of the day when the traffic is heavy. The lights go out when traffic calms down.
      - jermaustin1 8y ago
        I think that the size of the round about matters. The larger it is, the more opportunity a driver has to get to an internal lane and not destroy on-ramping from other directions. Also the timidness of drivers to enter a circle kills the flow and causes a backup that takes time to clear. I hit 4 different traffic circles on my 40 mile trip home, two of them are 1 lane wide and only about 100 feet wide, the other two are a lot larger and have 2-3 lanes. The narrow ones [1] back up much quicker during rush hour(s) especially when you have non-commuters using them (you can tell who they are). The one that is 3 lanes wide [2] usually has a protected lane for only going to the first exit (on then off), then a middle lane that circles the entire roundabout and a middle lane that allows you to exit at any of the exits whenever you want. It works very well. I have never seen a backup on it. The one that is only two lanes [3] backs up quite a bit during rush hour, when there is a West Point football game or because someone is too scared to enter. The backup clears relatively quickly, but I feel it wouldn't back up at all if there was protected on-ramp. 1: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.324487,-73.8829004,106m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.324487,-73.8829004,106m/data... 2: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.2981376,-73.935245,212m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.2981376,-73.935245,212m/data... 3: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3202891,-73.9909974,212m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3202891,-73.9909974,212m/dat...
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Yeah, cities with lots of quirky personality are lovely to visit, but if I'm going to live somewhere I'd prefer it was designed to be livable. There's more compelling character in people, places, and institutions than in street layout.
ElBarto 8y ago
All cities started as a blank slate. Recent US cities grew very quickly in a rather organised way and a grid was the quick and simple way to handle that.
- close04 8y ago
  > All cities started as a blank slate. Not at all, many cities evolved from towns, that evolved from villages, that evolved settlements, etc. That slow organic growth is different from the very accelerated "add one more tile" or "do it in one go" growth. Imagine the difference between having a baby that grows into an adult, and having an adult from the get go.
  - ElBarto 8y ago
    At one point there was nothing where every single city now stands. Everywhere it started with a blank slate. The difference is the speed of development and, even more importantly, the level of planning. US cities grew quickly and were planned. Some modern cities that grew very quickly recently are nevertheless messy because they grew without any sort of planning. Some cities are quite old but nevertheless follow a grid because that's the way they were planned. E.g. Beijing. Planning is the key.
    - close04 8y ago
      > At one point there was nothing where every single city now stands. Everywhere it started with a blank slate. Before the city there was a town, or a village. It's not blank slate > city, it's blank slate > something > something else > city. There's some evolution in the middle and that makes the difference. One grows organically over time and goes through different stages until it reaches the "city" stage, one is planned as a city from the start.
      - ElBarto 8y ago
        It starts with a blank slate... That's arguing on a distraction, though, as the key is planning, not blank slate.
ddoran 8y ago
You might get a kick out of how archaeologists "discovered" the oldest street in Dublin http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/04/dublins-oldest-street/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/04/dublins-oldest-street/
tralarpa 8y ago
> are a lot more convenient to navigate though It sounds indeed convenient for large cities where millions of people travel daily from one end of the city to the other. But does it matter for smaller cities (<200,000)? I have lived my whole life in "non-grid" cities in various countries and I couldn't imagine to live in a city with straight roads. Where is the fun? Finding an alley that you can use as a short cut, wandering around and discovering a nice house or garden that you cannot see from the main street, being scared as a kid of that small street where the big dog lives, etc.
- dnautics 8y ago
  Those exist in cities on a grid.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Even if you're not traveling from one end to another. It's great to be able to figure out where you're going without a map. I may never have been to 90th St. and 3rd Ave in Manhattan, but I know exactly where it is and how to get there from anywhere else in the grid.
  - kazen44 8y ago
    as someone who lives on the other end of the continent, this system was utterly confusing to me because streets are very long in US cities. Like, alright, ending up at 90th street is relatively easy, except that i ended up at the wrong end of this street, and the walk to the correct house is 2 kilometer...
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      Sure, but if you already know the city just a little bit, you'll know which end 3rd ave is close to. You don't have to memorize the location of a zillion randomly named streets (where is the intersection of Grove Lane and Daffodil St?) You just have to know which direction streets increase in, which avenues increase in, and roughly how far between each. That's the benefit of the grid.
    - 8y ago
cperciva 8y ago
I enjoy being a tourist in winding mazes. But when I want to get to work? Give me wide straight roads.
- golemiprague 8y ago
  And get stuck in hours long traffic jams? No thank you. Many congested cities are a better opportunity for a good public transportation. Compare LA or Sydney to Tokyo or London, congested cities are much more lively and most people have fast access to the action and to business districts unlike sprawled cities where only few rich people enjoy the interesting parts and the rest commute for hours to the boring suburbia. On the other hand they have bigger houses, wide streets and large parks so there is always a trade off, but getting to work is certainly easier in congested cities with good train system.
- icsllaf 8y ago
  Would there be a difference in commutes on work vs commutes dependent on driving? Much easier to walk in a winding maze than drive through it and you can put much more in the former than the latter dependent on the land-use and density.
- romwell 8y ago
  >But when I want to get to work? Give me wide straight roads. Why? Is getting lost on the way to work a problem? A month into working anywhere, you learn all the ways to get there anyway. And a 45-minute tram ride to work on winding streets beats a 1.5 hour traffic jam on a nice, wide, straight 101 North any time.
  - souprock 8y ago
    Wait, what? You think a 45-minute commute is good? The 1.5-hour thing is simply beyond the pale. You need to get out of the urban megacity. I've lived in several parts of the USA. My worst commute was 20 minutes by car, and my current commute is 3 minutes by car or 15 to 20 minutes by foot. These were all software development jobs. The reason is that I choose small cities. I choose places that have suburban density, though they aren't technically suburbs because people aren't commuting into an urban megacity. The jobs are local. Another nice benefit of this choice is my expenses. Houses go for 10% to 20% of what you pay in a place like the Bay Area, not even counting the extra land you get. Nearly everything else is cheaper too. Gas is half the price. Groceries are cheaper. Taxes are much lower.

YorkshireSeason 8y ago

I could imagine that the main factor influencing how "wander and explore"-friendly a city is, might not be age or evolved-vs-planned, but rather whether it is car-friendly or not (i.e. the degree of density). Car-friendliness can be by design or might evolve.

vvillena 8y ago

American cities aren't optimized for navigation, they are optimized for sales. A parcel of terrain is easier to sell when it's not that different from the one alongside it. Selling a house is also easier when there's no quirky features or strange floorplans.

eesmith 8y ago
I think it's hard to look at a grid system and say that it's optimized for sales. US urban planning in the late 1800s and early 1900s "emphasized a grid plan, partly out of extensive reliance on foot, horse and streetcars for transportation. In such earlier urban development, alleys were included to allow for deliveries of soiled supplies, such as coal, to the rear of houses which are now heated by electricity, piped natural gas or oil." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_end_(street)#Suburban_use_and_benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_end_(street)#Suburban_use... Sure, you might argue that people purchased those houses because of the benefits of the grid system, and hence (indirectly) optimized for sales. But that same Wikipedia page points out that post-war construction in the US emphasized cul-de-sac and crescent streets. > "Real estate developers prefer culs-de-sac because they allow builders to fit more houses into oddly shaped tracts of land and facilitate building to the edges of rivers and property lines.[10] They also choose these discontinuous network patterns of cul-de-sac and loop streets because of the often significant economies in infrastructure costs compared to the grid plan. ... The desirability of the cul-de-sac street type among home buyers is implied by the evidence that they often pay up to a 20% premium for a home on such a street, according to one study.[10] This could be because there is considerably less passing traffic, resulting in less noise and reduced actual or perceived risk, increasing the sense of tranquility." In other words, cul-de-sacs optimize sales, not grid patterns, and "quirky features or strange floorplans" of non-grid plats don't seem to be a problem - quite the opposite. I believe Joseph Smith's 'Plat of the City of Zion' influence on Salt Lake City's shows that the grid system of SLC was not specifically optimized for sales, and indeed was partially designed for navigation. At the very least, you know were you are with respect to the Temple.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Cul-de-sacs decrease criminality too. If you go down a cul-de-sacs to do recon, you look out of place.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    The Wikipedia page has several paragraphs on "this disputed issue", describing both pro- and con- views. One cited paper concludes "relative affluence and the number of neighbours has a greater effect than either being on a cul-de-sac or being on a through street".
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      so if living on a cul-de-sac predicts for relative affluence, it may be a proxy for lower crime?
      - eesmith 8y ago
        ... no? At least, that's not what I inferred from the Wikipedia article. If you want to dig into the details, the report is at https://spacesyntax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Hillier-Sahbaz_An-evidence-based-approach_010408.pdf https://spacesyntax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Hillier-S... . A quick search finds the following in the conclusion section: > Cul de sacs or grids? > The principle that larger the numbers of dwellings on the street segment reduces the risk of burglary, applies both to cul de sacs and grid like layouts. Small number of dwellings in a cul de sac are vulnerable, especially if the dwelling are affluent.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    That doesn't compute for me - at least not in an urban environment. You're safest on the street where there are the most people; and criminals aren't going to try to break into a building if there's an audience. High foot traffic leads to safe cities. Cul-de-sacs discourage foot traffic.
    - 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

I’m a huge fan of grid cities. If you look at Iowa, you see a bunch of towns of 3,000 people laid out in a grid. It’s a testament to the virtue of the people.

provolone 8y ago
It is nice when they throw in some diagonals and roundabouts for variety. Gives you more options when moving across the city.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Diagonals can be okay used sparingly, but roundabouts destroy traffic flow the way Americans do them (with lights).
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    We don't do them that way. In my area, roundabouts are put in where traffic occasionally bursts from one direction, and where traffic levels are low. Because they quit working once traffic increases, because it can be impossible to get on if there's continuous flow from another direction. Maybe the lights reported are because the roundabout has outlived its usefulness? A stopgap before ripping it out.
    - umichguy 8y ago
      Horses for courses....roundabouts are great for low to medium traffic conditions. Sometimes the lights are there for times of the day when the traffic is heavy. The lights go out when traffic calms down.
    - jermaustin1 8y ago
      I think that the size of the round about matters. The larger it is, the more opportunity a driver has to get to an internal lane and not destroy on-ramping from other directions. Also the timidness of drivers to enter a circle kills the flow and causes a backup that takes time to clear. I hit 4 different traffic circles on my 40 mile trip home, two of them are 1 lane wide and only about 100 feet wide, the other two are a lot larger and have 2-3 lanes. The narrow ones [1] back up much quicker during rush hour(s) especially when you have non-commuters using them (you can tell who they are). The one that is 3 lanes wide [2] usually has a protected lane for only going to the first exit (on then off), then a middle lane that circles the entire roundabout and a middle lane that allows you to exit at any of the exits whenever you want. It works very well. I have never seen a backup on it. The one that is only two lanes [3] backs up quite a bit during rush hour, when there is a West Point football game or because someone is too scared to enter. The backup clears relatively quickly, but I feel it wouldn't back up at all if there was protected on-ramp. 1: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.324487,-73.8829004,106m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.324487,-73.8829004,106m/data... 2: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.2981376,-73.935245,212m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.2981376,-73.935245,212m/data... 3: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3202891,-73.9909974,212m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3202891,-73.9909974,212m/dat...

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

Yeah, cities with lots of quirky personality are lovely to visit, but if I'm going to live somewhere I'd prefer it was designed to be livable. There's more compelling character in people, places, and institutions than in street layout.

ElBarto 8y ago

All cities started as a blank slate. Recent US cities grew very quickly in a rather organised way and a grid was the quick and simple way to handle that.

close04 8y ago
> All cities started as a blank slate. Not at all, many cities evolved from towns, that evolved from villages, that evolved settlements, etc. That slow organic growth is different from the very accelerated "add one more tile" or "do it in one go" growth. Imagine the difference between having a baby that grows into an adult, and having an adult from the get go.
- ElBarto 8y ago
  At one point there was nothing where every single city now stands. Everywhere it started with a blank slate. The difference is the speed of development and, even more importantly, the level of planning. US cities grew quickly and were planned. Some modern cities that grew very quickly recently are nevertheless messy because they grew without any sort of planning. Some cities are quite old but nevertheless follow a grid because that's the way they were planned. E.g. Beijing. Planning is the key.
  - close04 8y ago
    > At one point there was nothing where every single city now stands. Everywhere it started with a blank slate. Before the city there was a town, or a village. It's not blank slate > city, it's blank slate > something > something else > city. There's some evolution in the middle and that makes the difference. One grows organically over time and goes through different stages until it reaches the "city" stage, one is planned as a city from the start.
    - ElBarto 8y ago
      It starts with a blank slate... That's arguing on a distraction, though, as the key is planning, not blank slate.

ddoran 8y ago

You might get a kick out of how archaeologists "discovered" the oldest street in Dublin http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/04/dublins-oldest-street/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/04/dublins-oldest-street/

tralarpa 8y ago

> are a lot more convenient to navigate though It sounds indeed convenient for large cities where millions of people travel daily from one end of the city to the other. But does it matter for smaller cities (<200,000)? I have lived my whole life in "non-grid" cities in various countries and I couldn't imagine to live in a city with straight roads. Where is the fun? Finding an alley that you can use as a short cut, wandering around and discovering a nice house or garden that you cannot see from the main street, being scared as a kid of that small street where the big dog lives, etc.

dnautics 8y ago
Those exist in cities on a grid.
cimmanom 8y ago
Even if you're not traveling from one end to another. It's great to be able to figure out where you're going without a map. I may never have been to 90th St. and 3rd Ave in Manhattan, but I know exactly where it is and how to get there from anywhere else in the grid.
- kazen44 8y ago
  as someone who lives on the other end of the continent, this system was utterly confusing to me because streets are very long in US cities. Like, alright, ending up at 90th street is relatively easy, except that i ended up at the wrong end of this street, and the walk to the correct house is 2 kilometer...
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Sure, but if you already know the city just a little bit, you'll know which end 3rd ave is close to. You don't have to memorize the location of a zillion randomly named streets (where is the intersection of Grove Lane and Daffodil St?) You just have to know which direction streets increase in, which avenues increase in, and roughly how far between each. That's the benefit of the grid.
  - 8y ago

cperciva 8y ago

I enjoy being a tourist in winding mazes. But when I want to get to work? Give me wide straight roads.

golemiprague 8y ago
And get stuck in hours long traffic jams? No thank you. Many congested cities are a better opportunity for a good public transportation. Compare LA or Sydney to Tokyo or London, congested cities are much more lively and most people have fast access to the action and to business districts unlike sprawled cities where only few rich people enjoy the interesting parts and the rest commute for hours to the boring suburbia. On the other hand they have bigger houses, wide streets and large parks so there is always a trade off, but getting to work is certainly easier in congested cities with good train system.
icsllaf 8y ago
Would there be a difference in commutes on work vs commutes dependent on driving? Much easier to walk in a winding maze than drive through it and you can put much more in the former than the latter dependent on the land-use and density.
romwell 8y ago
>But when I want to get to work? Give me wide straight roads. Why? Is getting lost on the way to work a problem? A month into working anywhere, you learn all the ways to get there anyway. And a 45-minute tram ride to work on winding streets beats a 1.5 hour traffic jam on a nice, wide, straight 101 North any time.
- souprock 8y ago
  Wait, what? You think a 45-minute commute is good? The 1.5-hour thing is simply beyond the pale. You need to get out of the urban megacity. I've lived in several parts of the USA. My worst commute was 20 minutes by car, and my current commute is 3 minutes by car or 15 to 20 minutes by foot. These were all software development jobs. The reason is that I choose small cities. I choose places that have suburban density, though they aren't technically suburbs because people aren't commuting into an urban megacity. The jobs are local. Another nice benefit of this choice is my expenses. Houses go for 10% to 20% of what you pay in a place like the Bay Area, not even counting the extra land you get. Nearly everything else is cheaper too. Gas is half the price. Groceries are cheaper. Taxes are much lower.