How do you measure a city block?

What do you consider a "block"? Is it a predetermined distance, like 0.10 miles or something? Is it the distance from one street to the next (even though this distance could vary widely depending on the city's layout)?

in new york, we got 'long blocks' and 'short blocks' (the distance of which is one street to the next)

what is a long block?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_block

Since the spacing of streets in grid plans varies so widely among cities, or even within cities, it is difficult to generalize about the size of a city block. However, as reference points, the standard block in Manhattan is about 264 by 900 feet (80 m × 270 m); and in some U.S. cities standard blocks are as wide as 660 feet (200 m). The blocks in central Melbourne, Australia, are 660 by 330 feet (200 m × 100 m), formed by splitting the square blocks in an original grid with a narrow street down the middle.

East/west axis is longer (right?). In Manhattan at least.

Blocks seem like a distinctly new thing, comparatively. There are streets in Milan that meander and have like five or six different names. Blocks seem very grid-based to me.

michael white otm re: long blocks.
in other parts of the city obviously it differs and some neighborhoods are not set up along a standardized grid at all.

like 0.10 miles or something?

while steve is right that it's difficult to generalize, if you're going to do it, a lot of cities are going to be .05 miles=1 block. so 20 blocks is a mile. in some cities. sometimes.

n/a, weren't we discussing this on an SF thread recently?

I ask because in my mind a block is the distance from one intersecting street to the next, because people pretty much only use blocks when they're trying to give directions, but if the block is a standardized measure of distance, then it seems easier to just tell them the distance. If the block is something they can actually see and count, like the distance from intersection to the next, then it's useful. But it seems like this can be confusing too, because apparently sometimes people consider some intersections too minor to count as dividing up a new block, so then the number of blocks becomes arbitrary and thus uncountable and thus not particularly useful.

xpost I spun this off from the SF thread because it triggered the question in my mind but I don't live in SF and wanted to open it up to everyone

In Chicago a "city block" is equivalent to 1/8 of a mile. In much of the city, however, there's a street every 1/16 of a mile. For instance, if you were to walk north on Ravenswood between Belmont and Roscoe, I would consider that to be a walk of two city blocks. But there are actually four smaller blocks on that walk: Belmont->Melrose->School->Henderson->Roscoe.

because apparently sometimes people consider some intersections too minor to count as dividing up a new block

^^ disgusting savages imo

In much of the city, however, there's a street every 1/16 of a mile.

But this doesn't make sense because the distance between streets is going to be different if you're going North/South or East/West.

xxp And yeah you're right, this can be confusing. When I say "three blocks" I am really just thinking "a difference of 300 in street numbers."

similar to the concept of short blocks and long blocks mentioned above

because apparently sometimes people consider some intersections too minor to count as dividing up a new block

haha i do that tbh - like ill be giving directions and then realizing that what im calling "a block" actually has two tiny sidestreets in btw the intersections

But this doesn't make sense because the distance between streets is going to be different if you're going North/South or East/West.

How so?

are blocks in chicago square?

When I say "three blocks" I am really just thinking "a difference of 300 in street numbers."

Are street numbers related to blocks in America?

a lot of the time

like the distance between Belmont and Melrose (the next street north) is shorter than the distance between Ravenswood and Wolcott (the next street west). So the 1/16 of a mile figure has to either be for North/South blocks or East/West blocks, not all city blocks.

are blocks in chicago square?

Well, it's a square grid, with a distance of 1/16 mi between each line on the grid. But there's not always a street on each line.

Are street numbers related to blocks in America?

They are in Chicago, but certainly not everywhere.

manhattan 'blocks' to me feel wayyy shorter than the imaginary measurement of 'block' that I hold in my head...my-head-distance of a 'block' would be about the midpoint between a block and an avenue on the midtown manhattan scale.

like the distance between Belmont and Melrose (the next street north) is shorter than the distance between Ravenswood and Wolcott (the next street west). So the 1/16 of a mile figure has to either be for North/South blocks or East/West blocks, not all city blocks.

Well, to be fair, Ravenswood is kind of a weird street because it's bisected by the Metra tracks.

The distance between Belmont and Montrose is 1/8 mile. The difference between Ravenswood and Wolcott is 1/4 mile. But this has nothing to do with whether these streets run north/south or east/west. In some places (e.g., between Halsted and Racine), Melrose doesn't exist. So there is a "long block" (1/4 mile) between Belmont and School there. And in other places, there is an additional street (Honore) between Ravenswood and Wolcott. So there is a "short block" (1/8 mile) there.

Are street numbers related to blocks in America?

In most places, I believe, in the US. It's convenient to be able to look up at a street sign that has the street's name and then a number (ussally divisble by 100 in SF) with an arrow showing which direction they're headed.

Shasta should try to explain how they number addresses in Tokyo. That always left me perplexed.

North/South blocks in Manhattan are very short. I've walked insane sums of blocks going up and down in Manhattan.

Ah, I was wondering when I visited SF how come street numbers weren't consecutive, like 1740 would be next to 1756 or something. Think I spotted eventually that each 100 was a block, but still wasn't sure how they determined the gap between neighbouring houses' numbers. Guess it's handy when 1 big old house gets turned into 16 little flats though.

used to have a rule of thumb that 20 blocks = mile

manhattan is 13.4 miles long, roughly goes up to 220th street 220/20 = 11, and the distance from the battery to houston street is about 2 miles

ottomh: Tokyo blocks are called chome which spiral out from a traditionally (?) distinguished center. then on each chome the lowest address is assigned to the oldest building. so basically LOL.

Right. When I was modeling there as a teenager, we had "managers" to take us to castings and I always thought being a postman in Tokyo would suck major-time.

...and because 95% of the city was levelled to the ground in the dub-dub-deuce finding addresses can get really, really odd once you get to the areas (ueno no shitamachi) where there are actually buildings older than 65 years.

Here's an example of a part of Chicago where each block is indeed (roughly) 1/8 mi. long:

http://i41.tinypic.com/ao7qx5.jpg

xp: its usually if you are expected somewhere on biz, a representative will meet you at the train station of nearest point of interest to get you to your destination.

However, immediately south of that image, there's a more typical mix of 1/4 mi. blocks and 1/8 mi. blocks:

http://i42.tinypic.com/166aqza.jpg

http://web.archive.org/web/20080218145345/http://www.cogmag.com/02/bicycle-messengers-of-tokyo-ja.html

(street numbers in Tokyo) usually correspond to when the building was built, rebuilt, or simply approved for construction, not where it is on a map. So, as you go along a street, the building numbers are essentially random.

Ouch!
(was not doubting S. Shasta, just curious)

Man the amount of time I spent in Shibuya at Hachiko's statue...

that's mental

this may be why tokyo has the best RF mapping/GPS tech in the world. with most jp cellphones you can just scan the RF code marker posted on any block and it will tell you exactly where you are (and how to get to where you're going if you need that).

That must be awesome!

an awesome solution to a mental problem

Shoot, I just realized I meant "1/16" in that first image and "1/8 and 1/16" in that second image.

However, I also just realized that those figures are probably incorrect because this is a weird part of town where there are for some reason three blocks per 1/4 mile instead of two or four.

I give up.

When I was a kid (in England) I remember seeing addresses for letters sent into American comic books and being amazed at the street numbers, that there were apparently streets with 1000s of house on them.

xp: or even travel magazines in the extreme "rural" parts of the country... my cohort and I bought an Okinawan travel magazine ("Driving Around Okinawa!") and using our phones we scanned the RF codes of beaches, parks, cafes, museums, hiking trails to waterfalls that we wanted to visit, beamed them into our rental car GPS and then could plan our itineraries on the fly.

GPS may fully supplant RF in about 10 years but for now it's pretty amazing for urban planning.

Yeah, fit, I think that was brought up on this thread:
List all of the street numbers you have ever lived at

i had never thought of it as 20 blocks per mile. i thought a block was generally one tenth of a mile. i'm gonna check gmap pedometer for blocks near my house brb

Yeah, me too (xpost to fit)! I lived in a place where the street numbers generally went up to 30, it seemed like a big deal even seeing a street number over 100, US street numbers in books etc were confusing and impressive.

I'd still be interested to know how they work out the number difference between two neighbouring buildings. Is there a standard difference, do they divide the length of the block by the width of the building (accurately or just roughly), or what?

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/3695/60433332mv5.jpg

hmm i just looked up how far from a 1200 block to a 3200 block which i had assumed was about 2 miles and it's 1.6 miles! how about that.

they don't have to work out any differences i don't think. corner house number ends in 0, next one in 2, 4, 6, etc. then on the other side is odds and they just start over with 0 for the next block.

oh, ok
so if you've only got up to 1734 by the end of the 1700s block, it's still up to 1800 for the next one? maybe that was the weird jump I was noticing, I forget now, was definitely troubled by a house being more than 10 different from its neighbour though

(Britisher streets are usually, though not always, odds on one side and evens the other, so that was probably not the source of my confusion)

evens are north or west sides of street, odds are east or south

so if you've only got up to 1734 by the end of the 1700s block, it's still up to 1800 for the next one?

not usually. it it's a less dense street the urban planners will space the adresses out as well as possible (6 houses on block get: 1700, 1716, 1732, 1748, etc.)

urban planners are dipshits tho

iiijbait

re: steve's point

they also do that to account for future densification, you can slide in 1708, 1740 etc.

the next block does start at 1800 though

they are if they do that. i like the 0, 2, 4, etc. system

evens are north or west sides of street, odds are east or south

Not on my street

we are talking about the greatest city in america

so if you've only got up to 1734 by the end of the 1700s block, it's still up to 1800 for the next one?

I find this to be true where I live. The last address on my block is 4345. Cross the street and you start at 4400.

In my mind 22nd st to 24th st should be 2 blocks, even though in my part of town it's actually 4 blocks. But the roads causing the 'sub' blocks don't continue all the way down so I think of them as 'half' blocks even though they're pretty much regular length.

However, I also just realized that those figures are probably incorrect because this is a weird part of town where there are for some reason three blocks per 1/4 mile instead of two or four.

I give up.

I live exactly seven north/south blocks from Julia, and it's exactly one mile. Exactly. Figure that one out.

not usually. it it's a less dense street the urban planners will space the adresses out as well as possible (6 houses on block get: 1700, 1716, 1732, 1748, etc.)

Not to mention that in a lot of places, the numbers are based on lots, not actual buildings, so say I but up 1732 and 1748, I may just have a large building at 1732 and there's a numeric hiatus till the next lot.

only on ur street tho

not on mine

we have a 25 1/2th st

i pronounce it halfth

in st. paul mn, the properties aren't numbered with respect to the cross-street they're on -- they do follow "even/odd, one side/the other" but the distance between numbers has no bearing on anything. vast majority of north-south AND east-west streets are named not numbered anyway

i've been googling around to try to find what the logic is but i can find NOTHING.

I think there's a propensity toward the Euclidean grid in the US but everybody does it differently.

a propensity toward the Euclidean grid

serious?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan

fascinating!

tho i suspect the answer to why the US does this and other places don't is "genocide"

Reposted from the Chicago thread, and of course regarding the Chicago grid layout:

Getting lost does get more challenging around ((Chicago)). However, I must defend those horrifying Old World European city layouts. There's a theory of interior architecture that says that the more corners a room has, the more pleasing it is to the humans inside it. Curved walls are even better. So perhaps from street level, which is the only way those old cities were experienced as they were being built, there's a certain humanity to what on a map looks like baffling nonsense.

Not that this will help you next time you're lost in London. :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_numbering

a friend of mine wrote his thesis about the--i dont know how to say this without making it sound jerky--ontological implications of 'the grid' vs. 'the cul-de-sac'

american cities can be hella confusing to get around in, cos the exceptions to the grid system tend to be both really important and totally incomprehensible. this is true in the twin cities cos we have a river and lakes and it fucks everything up, plus the freeways were laid in in an even-more-dumm-than-average way for an american city.

i imagine in europe (or, like boston lol) your're sort of "always" lost, if that makes sense

don't worry, it's your friend who's the jerk not you xp

I also suspect that many older cities had periods of orderly development followed by periods of disorderly development. Grids are awesome if you have the manpower to get rid of all obstacles but if you don't? "Let's just have the street curve around it."

There's whole thing in that house numbering wiki I linked about your friend's thesis.

Er, that was to you, max.

I'm a little worried by how interesting I'm finding street numbering difference worldwide

blocks is a nice vague measurement, lets not get too keen ok

manhattan is pretty amazing -- luc sante writes about the grid system overtaking the old european jumble on the LES in low life.

ok maybe manhattan isn't amazing but luc sante writing about it is.

"How do you measure a city block?"

w/ a big ass tape measure lol

manhattan is pretty amazing tbf

don't worry, it's your friend who's the jerk not you xp

― iatee, Monday, April 19, 2010 5:51 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it was actually really cool! if you are at all familiar w/ poststructuralism you can probably tease a little of it out. liebniz was involved.

I'm with you, max.

http://www.gemplers.com/img/distance-measuring-wheel-G75620.jpg

I was waiting for that to do something in a Z S animation fashion.

http://www.segwaywaupaca.com/SegwayRider2c.jpg

so basically the idea of the "block" as a useful unit of measurement (e.g. "the drug store is three blocks north and two blocks east") should be abolished huh

it's not about measurement it's about directions

In London, you're dealing with a collection of settlements and villages that all sort of bled together over time, to the point where a thoroughfare called Roman Road has existed since Londinium. Grids appear wherever there is planned housing or development and came much later in London's development. Cities like Glasgow and Manchester are very griddy because of industrial revolution but older development follows everything from ley lines to borders between historic estates to whatever. Americans who have recently arrived can be identified by their befuddlement that 'meet me at the corner of Oxford and Regent' would be considered bizarre.

British direction advice is normally 100 per cent rubbish and contains advice such as 'bear left and go about five minutes down the road from the petrol garage' plus some kind of amusing story, when 'turn East on Euston Road at the junction with Judd Street' is *concise*.

I feel like most specific directions being given involving blocks will be about specific blocks (the ones along the route discussed!), so ... not much opportunity for problems? It's when people from other places are like "the line stretched a whole block" that you kind of lack in meaning.

apparently sometimes people consider some intersections too minor to count as dividing up a new block

^^ and I think this is defensible sometimes, because there are occasionally things -- say, a three-way intersection tucked between lines on an obvious grid -- that really mark out "side streets" and irregularities, and not blocks. (I'm thinking mostly of those three-way things: there are loads of those around where I last lived in Chicago that really don't register as "blocks," depending on where you're headed.)

(just to be clear, I don't mean Chicago's three-street intersections, I mean T-shaped three-way minor intersections)

Well, when dealing with a half-street it might be wise to point out in directions that a place is five blocks away, but the third street along is a 'short block'. Generally I'd be telling someone to take the fifth left into Street X and not get into an argument about the short block. Did you cross asphalt? Then it's a block. Generally I try to make directions that people don't have to over-think to follow.

I think if I were to give someone specific directions, as in "walk three blocks north, three blocks east," I would try to keep in mind the actual streets that someone would be passing (though I'm not sure I can always remember them). But most of the time when I mention blocks I'm just talking distances, like "it's three blocks north of here," by which I mean its address is approximately 300 away. On the other hand, if a stranger stops me on the corner and asks me how far away a certain street is, I'll either be vague ("just a few blocks that way") or put it in terms of miles. Because I understand that this stuff can get pretty fraught.

haha, you can do a three-way intersection without crossing asphalt, if you're on the right side! but yes, this is what I mean about specific directions. the number of blocks is never crucial, is it? you say, e.g., "go up until you hit North, it's about four blocks."

I've taken to telling Britishers that places in directions are at or near 'junctions' (British for intersection). Even so, I will still get thickos asking me 'what's the cross-street?' AAAAGH idiot Anglo-Saxon....

Measure your city block in loveeeeeeeeeee

Hahaha - that's what I keep thinking every time I see this thread.