6 ms·

I might be the only one but I strongly prefer grid-layout cities to these winding suburb road layouts anyhow. When your city is a grid you can make street names

I might be the only one but I strongly prefer grid-layout cities to these winding suburb road layouts anyhow. When your city is a grid you can make street names mean something and a person can navigate from place to place easily and have an intuitive idea of how far away something is, both without a cellphone.

toofy 5y ago
you’re definitely not the only one. grids make much more sense. and not only for ease of navigation.
AlbertCory 5y ago
I think you are the only one. I grew up in Chicago on a perfect grid. Now I live on a street that I picked precisely because you only drive down it if you live there. I don't like the sound of cars driving past. That's a personal preference that seems pretty generalized, even among people without kids. And on a street like that, you don't need speed bumps, because people aren't speeding down the street.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  He's definitely not the only person who prefers cities to suburbs. What? Now, I think almost everyone would prefer if their one street were not integrated into the grid. That would be the ideal. You live in a grid, but with none of the downsides. But failing that, many people opt to live in denser areas rather than the burbs, even if the cost is that folks sometimes drive down their street who are going someplace else..
- closeparen 5y ago
  But that’s the thing. The street’s utility is exclusively to the houses that are on it. Those houses are very unlikely to be paying enough property tax to cover its existence. This luxury of yours is paid for by other people’s productive activity in the future. Great deal for you! But we the (net) taxpayers ought to think about how many more of these sweetheart deals we offer to cul de sac homeowners in the future, before we bankrupt ourselves. I’m not a libertarian, I think it’s fine for government to tap rich people to provide nice things for everyone, but this particular nice thing (way more roadway than you pay for) has a pretty bad cost:benefit, and its beneficiaries are not exactly the neediest or most deserving of aid.
  - wkearney99 5y ago
    or if not 'tap the rich', better structure the payouts so there isn't such an imbalance. wage stagnation is a BIG problem.
  - halpert 5y ago
    I find it hard to believe that building a road is so expensive. Some random website I found claims the cost of a two-lane undivided road costs $3 million per mile in an urban setting. Looking at the satellite imagery of Mississauga linked elsewhere, the frontage of each house is around 50 ft. So there are about 211 houses per mile. That comes out to $14,000 per house to build the road. The approximate lifespan of an asphalt road is 18 years, leading to a per year cost of ~800 dollars. Of course, this doesn't include maintenance of the road (fixing pot holes, plowing, etc.), but $800 per year seems like a pretty manageable sum of money.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      In Galesburg (the town in the article), it wasn’t a manageable amount. That town has extremely low property values compared to any towns I’m familiar with, though. The author’s single-family home is worth about $60k. The median home in Mississauga is $900k (CAD), so I assume they can afford to maintain their roads. We’re talking about pretty different things, though. Suburbs of ultra high-cost-of-living cities have their taxes buoyed up their proximity to the big economic engines, while small towns like Galesburg have to figure out how to be self-sufficient without that constant influx of wealth.
      - halpert 5y ago
        But would more density really solve the problem? An inability to produce $800 per household will make anything hard.
        closeparen 5y ago
        The property tax bill in TFA is $1700, but roads are only one of the things property taxes buy.
- slyall 5y ago
  A big problem is this sort of design makes it hard to walk between places. All travel involves going to the main road, going some distance down that and then following a new branch. Queue route map that requires 10 minute drive to get to the "next block". Not too bad in you car but it means that you can't walk or bike anywhere unless they have put in paths between blocks. Means that if a 15-year-old kids wants an ice-cream their parent has to drive them to the corner store.
- BirdieNZ 5y ago
  You can have both, if you have a grid of main through-roads for transporting people around and then inside each "square" of the grid you have a continued fractal of sub-grids which aren't for through-traffic (slower speed limits, narrower streets, traffic calming measures, difference in material to make clear the difference from through-roads and local streets etc.). People traveling past won't use the inner streets because they aren't efficient for that, but people living in the neighbourhood will use the inner streets.
  - fiter 5y ago
    In Berkeley, CA they purposefully break up the grid for cars. So a street will be passable to pedestrians and bikes but blocked by bollards for cars. This gives the cul-de-sac effect without causing terrible walkability. Of course, traditional winding suburbs can accomplish something similar by adding pedestrian walkways through cul-de-sacs.
- nayuki 5y ago
  There's a good video explaining how urban and suburban residents alike want less traffic in their neighborhoods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Are American cardboard walls and windows actually that bad that you can hear cars through them?
  - pxeboot 5y ago
    Cars? Probably not. Loud trucks/motorcycles? Absolutely.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    As someone who lives in a recently built American house in a dense urban area: yes, definitely. It’s quiet enough that I can tune them out, mostly.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Most of Chicago has adapted against that problem: streets are now artificially cul-de-sac'd to cap them near arteries, so neighborhoods have explicitly designed traffic flows. It works reasonably well (I'm in Oak Park, not Chicago, but same deal). Obviously, you'd get less traffic in Glenview or whatever.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  > I grew up in Chicago on a perfect grid. Now I live on a street that I picked precisely because you only drive down it if you live there. I don't like the sound of cars driving past. That's a personal preference that seems pretty generalized, even among people without kids. Well, you could still get this, more or less, with a grid, like Barcelona's superblocks.
mech422 5y ago
Yeah - Phoenix has a basically 1 mile grid, with lil side streets in-between the major intersections. I hate it, because if you miss a turn, you basically have to go another full mile to hit another 'cross street'.

toofy 5y ago

you’re definitely not the only one. grids make much more sense. and not only for ease of navigation.

AlbertCory 5y ago

I think you are the only one. I grew up in Chicago on a perfect grid. Now I live on a street that I picked precisely because you only drive down it if you live there. I don't like the sound of cars driving past. That's a personal preference that seems pretty generalized, even among people without kids. And on a street like that, you don't need speed bumps, because people aren't speeding down the street.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
He's definitely not the only person who prefers cities to suburbs. What? Now, I think almost everyone would prefer if their one street were not integrated into the grid. That would be the ideal. You live in a grid, but with none of the downsides. But failing that, many people opt to live in denser areas rather than the burbs, even if the cost is that folks sometimes drive down their street who are going someplace else..
closeparen 5y ago
But that’s the thing. The street’s utility is exclusively to the houses that are on it. Those houses are very unlikely to be paying enough property tax to cover its existence. This luxury of yours is paid for by other people’s productive activity in the future. Great deal for you! But we the (net) taxpayers ought to think about how many more of these sweetheart deals we offer to cul de sac homeowners in the future, before we bankrupt ourselves. I’m not a libertarian, I think it’s fine for government to tap rich people to provide nice things for everyone, but this particular nice thing (way more roadway than you pay for) has a pretty bad cost:benefit, and its beneficiaries are not exactly the neediest or most deserving of aid.
- wkearney99 5y ago
  or if not 'tap the rich', better structure the payouts so there isn't such an imbalance. wage stagnation is a BIG problem.
- halpert 5y ago
  I find it hard to believe that building a road is so expensive. Some random website I found claims the cost of a two-lane undivided road costs $3 million per mile in an urban setting. Looking at the satellite imagery of Mississauga linked elsewhere, the frontage of each house is around 50 ft. So there are about 211 houses per mile. That comes out to $14,000 per house to build the road. The approximate lifespan of an asphalt road is 18 years, leading to a per year cost of ~800 dollars. Of course, this doesn't include maintenance of the road (fixing pot holes, plowing, etc.), but $800 per year seems like a pretty manageable sum of money.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    In Galesburg (the town in the article), it wasn’t a manageable amount. That town has extremely low property values compared to any towns I’m familiar with, though. The author’s single-family home is worth about $60k. The median home in Mississauga is $900k (CAD), so I assume they can afford to maintain their roads. We’re talking about pretty different things, though. Suburbs of ultra high-cost-of-living cities have their taxes buoyed up their proximity to the big economic engines, while small towns like Galesburg have to figure out how to be self-sufficient without that constant influx of wealth.
    - halpert 5y ago
      But would more density really solve the problem? An inability to produce $800 per household will make anything hard.
      - closeparen 5y ago
        The property tax bill in TFA is $1700, but roads are only one of the things property taxes buy.
slyall 5y ago
A big problem is this sort of design makes it hard to walk between places. All travel involves going to the main road, going some distance down that and then following a new branch. Queue route map that requires 10 minute drive to get to the "next block". Not too bad in you car but it means that you can't walk or bike anywhere unless they have put in paths between blocks. Means that if a 15-year-old kids wants an ice-cream their parent has to drive them to the corner store.
BirdieNZ 5y ago
You can have both, if you have a grid of main through-roads for transporting people around and then inside each "square" of the grid you have a continued fractal of sub-grids which aren't for through-traffic (slower speed limits, narrower streets, traffic calming measures, difference in material to make clear the difference from through-roads and local streets etc.). People traveling past won't use the inner streets because they aren't efficient for that, but people living in the neighbourhood will use the inner streets.
- fiter 5y ago
  In Berkeley, CA they purposefully break up the grid for cars. So a street will be passable to pedestrians and bikes but blocked by bollards for cars. This gives the cul-de-sac effect without causing terrible walkability. Of course, traditional winding suburbs can accomplish something similar by adding pedestrian walkways through cul-de-sacs.
nayuki 5y ago
There's a good video explaining how urban and suburban residents alike want less traffic in their neighborhoods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQw05Mr63E
KptMarchewa 5y ago
Are American cardboard walls and windows actually that bad that you can hear cars through them?
- pxeboot 5y ago
  Cars? Probably not. Loud trucks/motorcycles? Absolutely.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  As someone who lives in a recently built American house in a dense urban area: yes, definitely. It’s quiet enough that I can tune them out, mostly.
tptacek 5y ago
Most of Chicago has adapted against that problem: streets are now artificially cul-de-sac'd to cap them near arteries, so neighborhoods have explicitly designed traffic flows. It works reasonably well (I'm in Oak Park, not Chicago, but same deal). Obviously, you'd get less traffic in Glenview or whatever.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
> I grew up in Chicago on a perfect grid. Now I live on a street that I picked precisely because you only drive down it if you live there. I don't like the sound of cars driving past. That's a personal preference that seems pretty generalized, even among people without kids. Well, you could still get this, more or less, with a grid, like Barcelona's superblocks.

mech422 5y ago

Yeah - Phoenix has a basically 1 mile grid, with lil side streets in-between the major intersections. I hate it, because if you miss a turn, you basically have to go another full mile to hit another 'cross street'.