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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 s
by 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 agoOh 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 agoYou 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.