4 ms·

Are there any “circular” cities in the US? The grid based system of pretty much every US city is not conducive to walkability. It actively hinders it with ince

Are there any “circular” cities in the US? The grid based system of pretty much every US city is not conducive to walkability. It actively hinders it with incessant stop signals and cross walks. The meandering roads of many small and mid sized European cities means there are no lights needed - cars travel through the city slowly enough that they rely on their senses.

mksybr 3y ago
Rotona West, FL https://maps.app.goo.gl/vbkzbV7vviUK5sm46 https://maps.app.goo.gl/vbkzbV7vviUK5sm46
- codersfocus 3y ago
  That’s awful. JFC.
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Grids are pretty good. Maybe they're not always what's absolutely best, but I don't have a better general suggestion. They're a good default starting point. The main solution to your concerns is to just build narrower streets, IMO. That slows down car traffic. A good thing about grids, besides the navigability, is that traffic naturally distributes itself across them. There isn't a single arterial road that gets jammed. If Second Street is slow, maybe the cabbie will take Third. A strict grid does incur a "Manhattan distance" penalty on path lengths. That can be improved by including a few diagonals. Although its streets are a little wide for my taste, Washington DC is a pretty good example of this. It has a grid, superimposed with a network of circles, between which are direct straight-line connections. That gets you pretty close to Euclidean distances. That's not very high on my list of priorities though, TBH. Separated grades might be worth exploring in some situations. Chicago sort of did this. There is a lower level of streets where deliveries happen, and an upper level of streets with storefronts, where pedestrians spend more time. You could imagine a fully pedestrianized upper level. I don't think you want to overdo the lower level car infrastructure though, because at some point it just turns into parking garages. One suggestion I do have is to add more "safe places" for pedestrians. Islands are a step in the right direction. But two narrower parallel one way streets in opposite directions with a block in-between (or a park, if closer together) is better still. I'm now picturing the Blvd de Clichy, in Paris.
- presentation 3y ago
  I live in Tokyo but am from the US, can’t read the article though due to paywall. Honestly if you just inserted a skinny block in the middle of most American roads you’d end up with similarly sized streets as what we have here, and the resulting homes wouldn’t be smaller than what we have as well, while addressing housing shortages, improving walkability and density (provided not-stupid zoning)
crq-yml 3y ago
It's technically easy to turn a grid city into walk/bike superblocks, given political will: add modal filters to intersections so that auto traffic is faced with more cul-de-sacs. The fast traffic gets concentrated onto a sparser grid of fast roads and the slow traffic crosses it every second block. This would instantly make most grid cities palatable, without ripping out lots of parking or demolishing existing infra. Reasons why we won't do that: * Residents who complain that they can't drive up * Residents who complain that they got all the traffic * Neighbors who complain that they can't drive through * Emergency services who complain about worse response times * Businesses who get cut away from the fast access Regardless, it's possible to get here, even if it gets cobbled together incrementally over decades.

mksybr 3y ago

Rotona West, FL https://maps.app.goo.gl/vbkzbV7vviUK5sm46 https://maps.app.goo.gl/vbkzbV7vviUK5sm46

codersfocus 3y ago
That’s awful. JFC.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

Grids are pretty good. Maybe they're not always what's absolutely best, but I don't have a better general suggestion. They're a good default starting point. The main solution to your concerns is to just build narrower streets, IMO. That slows down car traffic. A good thing about grids, besides the navigability, is that traffic naturally distributes itself across them. There isn't a single arterial road that gets jammed. If Second Street is slow, maybe the cabbie will take Third. A strict grid does incur a "Manhattan distance" penalty on path lengths. That can be improved by including a few diagonals. Although its streets are a little wide for my taste, Washington DC is a pretty good example of this. It has a grid, superimposed with a network of circles, between which are direct straight-line connections. That gets you pretty close to Euclidean distances. That's not very high on my list of priorities though, TBH. Separated grades might be worth exploring in some situations. Chicago sort of did this. There is a lower level of streets where deliveries happen, and an upper level of streets with storefronts, where pedestrians spend more time. You could imagine a fully pedestrianized upper level. I don't think you want to overdo the lower level car infrastructure though, because at some point it just turns into parking garages. One suggestion I do have is to add more "safe places" for pedestrians. Islands are a step in the right direction. But two narrower parallel one way streets in opposite directions with a block in-between (or a park, if closer together) is better still. I'm now picturing the Blvd de Clichy, in Paris.

presentation 3y ago
I live in Tokyo but am from the US, can’t read the article though due to paywall. Honestly if you just inserted a skinny block in the middle of most American roads you’d end up with similarly sized streets as what we have here, and the resulting homes wouldn’t be smaller than what we have as well, while addressing housing shortages, improving walkability and density (provided not-stupid zoning)

crq-yml 3y ago

It's technically easy to turn a grid city into walk/bike superblocks, given political will: add modal filters to intersections so that auto traffic is faced with more cul-de-sacs. The fast traffic gets concentrated onto a sparser grid of fast roads and the slow traffic crosses it every second block. This would instantly make most grid cities palatable, without ripping out lots of parking or demolishing existing infra. Reasons why we won't do that: * Residents who complain that they can't drive up * Residents who complain that they got all the traffic * Neighbors who complain that they can't drive through * Emergency services who complain about worse response times * Businesses who get cut away from the fast access Regardless, it's possible to get here, even if it gets cobbled together incrementally over decades.