>Grids are the best way to lay out a city so you don't end up with ridiculous burbs like this where it's a 1.5 mile walk between adjacent lots. That's an extre

>Grids are the best way to lay out a city so you don't end up with ridiculous burbs like this where it's a 1.5 mile walk between adjacent lots. That's an extreme example. "Non-grid" isn't a proper category, there are lots of ways of organizing streets that aren't regular grids. The important feature is permeability and alternative routes, not rectilinear structure as such. Sprawl suburb layout is bad because it goes out of its way to limit the number of alternate routes. Literally goes out of its way -- the roads twist and turn like a space-filling curve, often with all traffic funneled into just a few entrances/exits from the development onto the larger road network. That doesn't happen by accident, it's planned that way, to limit through-traffic that residents have to endure (meanwhile they impose through-traffic on everyone else who doesn't live in those developments). Whereas organic non-grid layouts still have plenty of redundancy. Check out the street pattern of London or Manchester or any British city that isn't Milton Keynes. The geometric advantage of grids is most acute at the smaller scales: they maximize the amount of area that is within walking distance of any given point. Public transport stops, shops, schools, etc.