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As an aside, I wonder how these sorts of road layouts affects people who grow up there in terms of spatial awareness. The article and linked paper talks about

As an aside, I wonder how these sorts of road layouts affects people who grow up there in terms of spatial awareness. The article and linked paper talks about "legible cities" and people struggling to navigate a non-legible city because they don't know which way they are facing if there is not a grid. Do people who grew up in a rigid grid system have a different way of viewing the world compared to those who are used to more chaotic and organic layouts? If folks don't know where they are going or which way they are facing without relying on the roads being a grid, what other aspects of their lives are impacted by under-developed spatial reasoning?

eszed 3y ago
That's a really interesting question! The two cities with which I am most familiar are San Francisco and London, and (though I'd never thought about it before) my navigational concepts of them are very different. Getting around San Francisco is, uh, grid-like: I think in terms of "corner of X and Y", and then the relationship between myself and my destination on a coordinate plane. Getting there becomes a series of maneuvers - some of them indirect, for route-efficiency reasons (like, this street has timed lights, or this one permits left turns) - which carry with them very few (street-level, at least) visual images of the route. London is all about pathways, a choice between more and less direct connections between my location and where I'm going. Just about every landmark and decision-point triggers a visual memory of that specific location and choice. In San Francisco I can point fairly confidently towards a given destination, drive that direction, and find it by "feel" - eg, by intersecting one of the two cross streets on the coordinate plane. In London, I couldn't do that on a more granular than borough / neighborhood level - like, I'd know how to get to, say, Camberwell from a given location, but not in precisely which cardinal direction it lies, and once I get there I'd need to rely on landmark-based directions (or nowadays, GPS). Navigation in London is more complex, I suppose (San Francisco has its quirks!), but the conceptual framework it requires leaves me with a more detailed and enjoyable sense of the city itself. That's one person's experience. I'd be curious to know the extent to which it generalizes.
- arethuza 3y ago
  My mental model of London is basically the Tube map - when I look at a map of where the Tube lines and stations are physically located I find it quite disturbing.
  - eszed 3y ago
    Same here! I only developed a feel for the actual geography once we had a car. I love driving in London. It demands complete attention, like an action-oriented video game, and the culture (if you will) of drivers is a wonderful blend of courtesy and aggression. Like, if you sit waiting to make a turn onto a busy street you'll never find a gap, but if you assert yourself into traffic someone will always let you in; or, if you and someone else simultaneously arrive at opposite ends of a street with only one traffic lane you're immediately in a race with them to get to the pullout to let the other one by. It's great fun, and made everywhere else I've driven feel like easy-mode.
AYBABTME 3y ago
I'm a North American living part time in Seoul and I get lost using and cycling in small streets all the time, they turn and take random directions and my internal compass doesn't realize I'm now facing East when I thought I was walking North. I prefer cycling on smaller side streets but it's way harder to "guess" my way around detours unless I'm using a map app. I've seen delivery drivers do the same on their scooters, so I guess they feel the same unless they're very comfortable with a specific block. As in, they don't try to guess detours using some mental model of street layout: they check the map. Also I've learned people don't give directions using cardinal directions: there's no such thing as "walk North on Seorae-ro" (or at least I was told). Which I guess makes sense since the streets on which this would be a useful mean of communicating directions are very few.
pxeger1 3y ago
I have lived in non-grid cities all my life, but my mental map always approximates things as a grid. I occasionally then get really confused because there’s a square with five sides, or three, because roads aren’t straight or perpendicular in reality. It also affects my perception of distance because I assume parallel roads in a quadrilateral are the same length, but they’re not. The only exception is the city I went to uni in - when I moved, I bought a map and studied it quite a lot. It’s a city I have a much stronger perception of north in, and I don’t really have the angles problem above, but I still have the distance problem.
- didgeoridoo 3y ago
  Oh man Boston Common always used to do this to me — my brain insisted it is a square when it’s actually a pentagon. It also doesn’t help that Tremont curves from nearly parallel with Beacon by Park St to almost perpendicular by Boylston. The net effect was that my brain considered the Theatre District to exist in another — largely inaccessible — dimension.
- eythian 3y ago
  You might find Amsterdam an interesting challenge then. Within the centre area (roughly speaking, the bit enclosed by the Singelgracht), it was planned, but they had in mind (paraphrasing) "the practicality of a grid, but the beauty of curved streets", and so there's a horse-shoe type arrangement overall and then a grid within that. The effect is that you can walk along a canal, not really notice the curving of it, and be surprised that you're facing 90° or more away from where you expected.
Erratic6576 3y ago
I like having a huge mountain at hand on the horizon when I’m looking around. It is hard to find in most populations
- arethuza 3y ago
  Or a huge castle on the plug of an ancient volcano....
euroderf 3y ago
I grew up in an area with a grid, and NSEW comes easily. OTOH I never cease to be appalled by people who are absolutely clueless about which direction North is. How is it possible to navigate ? Do you need a mapping app fused into your brain ?
lrasinen 3y ago
I've lived mostly in non-grid or barely-grid cities and towns. My youth was spent next to a forest. The closest thing to grid around here is southern Helsinki, and it's also my least favorite area to navigate in. I'm always off by a block or two, and it feels like it's all the same, no landmarks or character or sense of scale. But when I'm just a few km to the north, with diagonal streets etc, I can locate myself much easier.

eszed 3y ago

That's a really interesting question! The two cities with which I am most familiar are San Francisco and London, and (though I'd never thought about it before) my navigational concepts of them are very different. Getting around San Francisco is, uh, grid-like: I think in terms of "corner of X and Y", and then the relationship between myself and my destination on a coordinate plane. Getting there becomes a series of maneuvers - some of them indirect, for route-efficiency reasons (like, this street has timed lights, or this one permits left turns) - which carry with them very few (street-level, at least) visual images of the route. London is all about pathways, a choice between more and less direct connections between my location and where I'm going. Just about every landmark and decision-point triggers a visual memory of that specific location and choice. In San Francisco I can point fairly confidently towards a given destination, drive that direction, and find it by "feel" - eg, by intersecting one of the two cross streets on the coordinate plane. In London, I couldn't do that on a more granular than borough / neighborhood level - like, I'd know how to get to, say, Camberwell from a given location, but not in precisely which cardinal direction it lies, and once I get there I'd need to rely on landmark-based directions (or nowadays, GPS). Navigation in London is more complex, I suppose (San Francisco has its quirks!), but the conceptual framework it requires leaves me with a more detailed and enjoyable sense of the city itself. That's one person's experience. I'd be curious to know the extent to which it generalizes.

arethuza 3y ago
My mental model of London is basically the Tube map - when I look at a map of where the Tube lines and stations are physically located I find it quite disturbing.
- eszed 3y ago
  Same here! I only developed a feel for the actual geography once we had a car. I love driving in London. It demands complete attention, like an action-oriented video game, and the culture (if you will) of drivers is a wonderful blend of courtesy and aggression. Like, if you sit waiting to make a turn onto a busy street you'll never find a gap, but if you assert yourself into traffic someone will always let you in; or, if you and someone else simultaneously arrive at opposite ends of a street with only one traffic lane you're immediately in a race with them to get to the pullout to let the other one by. It's great fun, and made everywhere else I've driven feel like easy-mode.

AYBABTME 3y ago

I'm a North American living part time in Seoul and I get lost using and cycling in small streets all the time, they turn and take random directions and my internal compass doesn't realize I'm now facing East when I thought I was walking North. I prefer cycling on smaller side streets but it's way harder to "guess" my way around detours unless I'm using a map app. I've seen delivery drivers do the same on their scooters, so I guess they feel the same unless they're very comfortable with a specific block. As in, they don't try to guess detours using some mental model of street layout: they check the map. Also I've learned people don't give directions using cardinal directions: there's no such thing as "walk North on Seorae-ro" (or at least I was told). Which I guess makes sense since the streets on which this would be a useful mean of communicating directions are very few.

pxeger1 3y ago

I have lived in non-grid cities all my life, but my mental map always approximates things as a grid. I occasionally then get really confused because there’s a square with five sides, or three, because roads aren’t straight or perpendicular in reality. It also affects my perception of distance because I assume parallel roads in a quadrilateral are the same length, but they’re not. The only exception is the city I went to uni in - when I moved, I bought a map and studied it quite a lot. It’s a city I have a much stronger perception of north in, and I don’t really have the angles problem above, but I still have the distance problem.

didgeoridoo 3y ago
Oh man Boston Common always used to do this to me — my brain insisted it is a square when it’s actually a pentagon. It also doesn’t help that Tremont curves from nearly parallel with Beacon by Park St to almost perpendicular by Boylston. The net effect was that my brain considered the Theatre District to exist in another — largely inaccessible — dimension.
eythian 3y ago
You might find Amsterdam an interesting challenge then. Within the centre area (roughly speaking, the bit enclosed by the Singelgracht), it was planned, but they had in mind (paraphrasing) "the practicality of a grid, but the beauty of curved streets", and so there's a horse-shoe type arrangement overall and then a grid within that. The effect is that you can walk along a canal, not really notice the curving of it, and be surprised that you're facing 90° or more away from where you expected.

Erratic6576 3y ago

I like having a huge mountain at hand on the horizon when I’m looking around. It is hard to find in most populations

arethuza 3y ago
Or a huge castle on the plug of an ancient volcano....

euroderf 3y ago

I grew up in an area with a grid, and NSEW comes easily. OTOH I never cease to be appalled by people who are absolutely clueless about which direction North is. How is it possible to navigate ? Do you need a mapping app fused into your brain ?

lrasinen 3y ago

I've lived mostly in non-grid or barely-grid cities and towns. My youth was spent next to a forest. The closest thing to grid around here is southern Helsinki, and it's also my least favorite area to navigate in. I'm always off by a block or two, and it feels like it's all the same, no landmarks or character or sense of scale. But when I'm just a few km to the north, with diagonal streets etc, I can locate myself much easier.