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. Th

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.