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Mexico City, at least in the central parts, has an interesting layout. Busy avenues roughly 1km apart grid the neighborhoods. Inside those squares most of the s

Mexico City, at least in the central parts, has an interesting layout. Busy avenues roughly 1km apart grid the neighborhoods. Inside those squares most of the streets are one-way and low speed. You can walk in almost any direction and find a bus or subway station in 8 minutes. And of course they mix residential commercial and light industrial freely. It’s not unusual to find a small furniture maker next to a restaurant below an apartment building. They don’t ban cars and the “blocks” are larger, but it seems to work.

L_Rahman 5y ago
It does work really well and makes it really nice to walk or cycle inside your "zone" so to speak. The downside is that they concede the large avenues entirely to automobile centered design resulting in 10-13 way intersections that you have to navigate in order to get from one zone to another. The most egregions example is probably the exit from Chapultepec leading into Condesa which drops you off next to a highway with no way of crossing without a 1KM detour: https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+CDMX,+Mexico/@19.4210986,-99.1788215,16.87z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x85d1ff4489e635e3:0xed1c076e8bc9b8e7!8m2!3d19.4149803!4d-99.1774462 https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+C...
ceras 5y ago
That reminds me a bit of Tokyo. It's full of small streets[0] that cars can drive on, but they tend not to because they're narrow and don't have sidewalks, so making cars move slowly. Cars then naturally flow through to the larger streets[1] when possible, which do have sidewalks. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 (this street has a small painted sidewalk since it has more commercial activity, though pedestrians often walk in the middle; the adjacent streets have no painted sidewalk). [1] https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7 https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7

L_Rahman 5y ago

It does work really well and makes it really nice to walk or cycle inside your "zone" so to speak. The downside is that they concede the large avenues entirely to automobile centered design resulting in 10-13 way intersections that you have to navigate in order to get from one zone to another. The most egregions example is probably the exit from Chapultepec leading into Condesa which drops you off next to a highway with no way of crossing without a 1KM detour: https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+CDMX,+Mexico/@19.4210986,-99.1788215,16.87z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x85d1ff4489e635e3:0xed1c076e8bc9b8e7!8m2!3d19.4149803!4d-99.1774462 https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+C...

ceras 5y ago

That reminds me a bit of Tokyo. It's full of small streets[0] that cars can drive on, but they tend not to because they're narrow and don't have sidewalks, so making cars move slowly. Cars then naturally flow through to the larger streets[1] when possible, which do have sidewalks. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 (this street has a small painted sidewalk since it has more commercial activity, though pedestrians often walk in the middle; the adjacent streets have no painted sidewalk). [1] https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7 https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7