city grids c/d

http://i48.tinypic.com/2l95x53.png

There are few things more depressing to me than trudging up a perfectly straight city street.

must be miserable to be a flâneur in new york

I voted 'something in between' but actually I think I do prefer 'mediaeval'.

Grids can be boring as fuck, but otoh, I'm hugely impressed when a city manages to something interesting with a grid.

Something in-between, tbh.

i don't know that i've encountered any proper grid layouts, seeing that i've never left the uk nor been to any of the particularly griddy new towns. i'm sure it'd be nice to not really have to have faith in my non-existent sense of direction (dunno how many times i took wrong turns and ran into dead ends when visiting york earlier this year), but utter homogeneity is a hefty price to pay.

I was introduced yesterday to a public thoroughfare in London - yellow lines 'n' all - that runs through the cellars of a now demolished John Adam terrace, some original brickwork vaulting still visible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/arts/design/manhattan-street-grid-at-museum-of-city-of-new-york.html

some cool mapz

I think I'd get tired of all the short, interrupted sight lines if there was no grid whatsoever...I need to stretch my gaze out and see some sweeping views, give the city a feeling of majesty, of being arranged according to a giant's scale. But then you have to come down from that and be able to live and walk comfortably right at ground level, too.

So...something in between, I guess.

haussmann-esque blvds can get you sweeping views without a grid

http://www.canvasreplicas.com/images/Avenue%20de%20L%20Opera,%20Paris%20Camille%20Pissarro.jpg

I actually prefer oldschool grids over suburban cul de sacs where "Deer Hills Court" intersects with "Deer Pond Circle" tbh.

voted medieval, grids are for noobs

ya but basically everyone agrees suburban cul de sacs are a low point in human history and culture, so they're not an option here

I don't like to spend time getting places, I like BEING at them already, so really medieval is never going to win with me. Straight lines, baby.

Everything else is time-between; as Christopher Robin says, "It isn't really anywhere / it's somewhere else, instead."

ya but basically everyone agrees suburban cul de sacs are a low point in human history and culture, so they're not an option here

― iatee, Tuesday, January 3, 2012 5:58 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Not everybody.

sth inbetween

literally everybody

fact

They are so good.

haha, what about giant fucking arterials with random, non-connecting squiggles in between

though i guess even then you can have gridded or non gridded arterials

I feel that I can get lost metaphorically in a city without the frightening experience of being actually lost. Grids are a great idea. I'll take the street layout of NYC over that of London any day. As if London needs to be more overwhelming a place to be without literally going around in circles.

whatever new york is. "something in between" leaning toward grid i guess

mostly grid with odd pockets of non-grid

medieval is "fun" but only if there are like medieval buildings there too. the idea of medieval whorls combined w/ new condos makes me want to barf

I love the Chicago grid and find it v. comforting.

yeah learning how to drive around a city in Baltimore was very helpful because it has such a consistent grid. Washington is i guess pretty griddy too but there are so many things about it that still confuse or intimidate me that i don't dare drive around it without GPS.

jaymc otm

a patchwork of grids. i have no idea what medieval would even be like tbh, if i lived somewhere like that i doubt i'd even own a car.

i live in a very griddy city. what is the griddiest city?

all our streets are (number) (directional), with the directional being what direction the street is from the mormon temple and the number how far.

I don't think there is a way to measure griddiest. something western and flat, probably. downtown sacramento's pretty good:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=sacramento+&hl=en&ll=38.575246,-121.487718&spn=0.019627,0.038581&sll=40.684283,-111.974459&sspn=0.038076,0.077162&vpsrc=6&hnear=Sacramento,+California&t=h&z=15

With the exception of a few streets (fewer than the number of your fingers), Chicago is madly straight, perfectly N/S grid from Evanston to Indiana.

Wow, not only is downtown Sacramento pretty griddy, the street names are also 1st St., 2nd St., etc. crossed by A St., B St., etc.

salt lake city's grid is next-level in the sense that it isn't determined by or built around a geographic landmark of any kind and the grid always conforms to absolute directions. also, the streets are insanely wide. it's like living in a slightly deranged thought.

even the freeways here are griddy

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=salt+lake+city,+ut&hl=en&ll=40.719941,-111.853523&spn=0.143894,0.338173&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.41771,86.572266&vpsrc=6&hnear=Salt+Lake+City,+Salt+Lake,+Utah&t=m&z=12

i think it's crazy judging grids on a purely aesthetic basis, if you don't like straight lines or right angles or w/e. i have no sense of direction but the idea that i can be on 2nd and 2nd & know where 99th & 10th is even though i've never been there is a huge, transformative part of how you use a city (i realise this is technically specific to nyc/portland style grids with alphanumeric naming but i think it's prob true without, also, to some degree). there is charm to medieval cities sure but being able to know where i am trumps specifically enjoying the block i'm on, imo.

yeah but if you've lived there for a long time you'd know regardless

i think that's a weird caveat though, because i-guess-maybe, yes, but then maybe not, alphanumerics seeming a more comprehensive way to map out a city than experience, what with all its demographic foibles. & it's useful for people who either just got there or don't necessarily know a place corner to corner, which is a p broad church of important if ephemeral denizens. like i say i have zero sense of direction so maybe i'm more sensitive to it but i think it is a pretty big deal & prob has a big effect on what life & circulation around a city is like

right, there's an element of instant mobility to a grid that's comforting and a bit alarming at the same time. space seems so instantly masterable (and is) when it's cartesian. it's kind of a drug imo.

xp

i think it is a pretty big deal & prob has a big effect on what life & circulation around a city is like

i think it's a huge deal.

I like grids overcome by geography, Los Angeles style, so somewhere in between.

i like the twin cities a lot (duh): mostly a grid but broken up by plenty of hills, rivers and lakes; street naming conventions that are haphazard, alphabetical for a while, then not, names repeated in different places, directional nicknames for difft parts of the city that don't have stable relationships to each other, and a totally batshit house numbering system in st paul that i've never seen anyone try to explain.

are grids somehow more democratic? they're definitely better suited to modern capitalism.

love this article: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13129884/Geertz-Bazaar-Economy

i have a faint feeling that grids are definitely an 'enlightenment' kind of a thing, with all the dark napoleonic and indian-killing ish baked in

nb i like grids, feel like there's no way back, but some grids take it ~too far~

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101218122228/tron/images/thumb/4/47/Grid.jpg/145px-Grid.jpg

i have no sense of direction but the idea that i can be on 2nd and 2nd & know where 99th & 10th is even though i've never been there is a huge, transformative part of how you use a city (i realise this is technically specific to nyc/portland style grids with alphanumeric naming but i think it's prob true without, also, to some degree)

Chicago has a system whereby most major streets in the grid are exactly one mile and also 800 street numbers apart, with the downtown intersection of State/Madison serving as the 0/0 coordinate. Once you internalize some of the other coordinates (e.g., Belmont is 3200 North, Ashland is 1600 West), it becomes very easy to locate an address. If I need to get to 1800 W. Belmont, I know automatically that it's a quarter-mile west of Ashland and the same distance east of Damen. (Having lived here for 10+ years, I also know that the cross street is probably Ravenswood.)

I like LA's clashing grids, and was reading about how it came to be fairly recently, but can't remember the reason or where I read it.

(from 1917, pic may be too large)

http://www.mapcruzin.com/free-state-maps/states/california/los_angeles_1917.jpg

love l a

this thread makes me want to play simcity so badly

Sacramento grid made me lol when I first moved here, A and 1st street, wow someone just could not be assed with street names.

But it's actually really cool. Even now when I get an address like, 4824 J Street, I know right away "oh down by 48th st".., it's kinda nifty!

I still love the Melbourne CBD grid naming that Trayce mentioned, King, William, Queen, Victoria, it's my fave.

There's an area here where the streets are named in order of the presidents, which is a little annoying since I can't ever remember who comes first, Taylor or Tyler.

(And no, Cleveland Street doesn't circle around Harrison Cove.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

In defense of DC I have to say I really love the roundabouts/traffic circles

I like the way Barcelona cut the corners of the blocks in their grid section (called The Expansion, iirc). Done to let more light in at the intersections, I read. Also the way every third block or so had a wider street to allow a strip park between the streets.

And Oxnard, where I did most of my growing up, sometimes names streets alphabetically on some theme. Near me was the tree section (Ash, Birch, Cedar, Date, Elm, etc) and a California city section (Ontario, Piedmont, Rialto, Saratoga, Tehama, Ukiah, Visalia - think they skipped Q).

yeah I always dig the alphabetical word thing...it's a nice compromise

My favorite street name in town comes after the alphabet streets - you go from A to Z and then to AMPERSAND STREET.

Everybody knows [ comes after Z!

There are a bunch of communities in Calgary where the street naming convention takes the first word/letters of the community name. Example: the community I lived in in Calgary was called Silver Springs, so all of the street names started with 'silver': Silver Crest, Silver Brook, Silvergrove, etc. In Dalhousie, you get street names like Dalgetty, Dalrimple, Dalhurst... It's pretty much the stupidest, most confusing naming convention ever. Navigating is difficult because all the street names look the same and all the houses look the same.

salsa shark wears the scars of such early exposure to alliteration to this day

scars of alliteration exposure / questionable urban design

near my parent's house is a road called GOOD INTENTIONS ROAD

I used to mail out bill payments at a job I had, some of which went to a street I think in Texas, which I guess had been renamed at some point following the appearance of a bunch of corporate firms who'd bought up cheap land, to place their processing centres in, & every month or so I'd get to mail in a payment to CASH COLLECTIONS DRIVEWAY or something really similar, kicking myself because I can't remember. which just seemed like the most brutal resignation of any attempt to make a street a street. like almost the opposite of good intentions road.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/01/how-do-we-find-our-way-around-city/967/

sorta related to earlier discussion

― iatee, Tuesday, 17 January 2012 20:08 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this study was lead by a Dr Frankenstein, fwiw

growing up in lol adelaide its grid all the way for me

which is tough because sydney was mapped out by drunk convicts iirc

Grids are ok if you also have hills but I think medieval is the most interesting.

Hold on grids are terrible if you also have hills. Because then you regularly end up having to walk uphill then downhill (or downhill then uphill) to get between two points of the same altitude.

I like that. Views!

this thread needs more pictures of 'your city' and its grid or lackthereof btw

Downtown. Nice and orderly.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/tt203/pplains/Screenshot2012-01-18at95437AM.png

And where the hills start.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/tt203/pplains/Screenshot2012-01-18at95521AM.png

Addresses and streets are divided into EWNS, but unfortunately, the dividing line for these directions are at Broadway and Markham – right at the top of the map near the river.

That means there are hardly any "north" streets (at least in this part of town) and the numeral addresses way out in west Little Rock are five or six digits long.

Grids all the way. Specifically Chicago. Jesse and n/a super OTM.

I have no as in none innate sense of direction. Even when I can see the lake (always east) I have to stop, actually stop walking and stand still so I can concentrate, and think "lake is east, so that way is west (here I turn and stand so west is to my left (spells WE that way, you see)) and north is up and south is down" to get my bearings. So this joy of exploration in a medieval city that some of you talk about is abject terror to me.

That said I love London in part because it's confusing and terrifying and mysterious to me. But if I lived there I would probably have a nervous breakdown or at least always be late for everything bc I would get lost and have to take a taxi to escape my own mental vortex every time I went anywhere.

http://cl.ly/1R471F040A3P2C2N3C0E

My greater neighborhood

Whoops, maybe this works: http://f.cl.ly/items/0s2D0w2K2n2n1w1M2D3d/2012-01-18%20at%2010:34.png

dead people don't give a damn about your grid system.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

genuinely surprised griddier didn't win

There's an area here where the streets are named in order of the presidents, which is a little annoying since I can't ever remember who comes first, Taylor or Tyler.

love this, because i know them

nyc pisses me off because while it has the grid, the street numbers don't make sense -- if something is between sixth and seventh, it should start with a 6, not a whatever west.

moving from mpls and anchorage to dc was tough because the numbered streets run e-w in the former and n-s in the latter. also in dc you can stay on the same road, going straight, and suddenly you are on a different road -- following us route 50 through the district is quite a feat.

i like idiosyncratic things -- eg in pittsburgh fifth and sixth avenues converge -- but it's bogus to build them from scratch like the hill in center field at minutemaid in houston. shit like venice and cordoba is way too idiosyncratic tho.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/01/gps-smartphones-and-dumbing-down-personal-navigation/1036/

venice is probably the one city it's not useful to make any comparison to!

not that you were, just saying

Serendipitous journeys are overrated. I bet that author likes cuddling paper books too.

I mean for every serendipitous journey I have had, there would be ten holy shit where am I, I've got to go to the bathroom, I'm going to die of hypothermia while waiting for this bus journeys.

"Gosh this map of Venice is so confusing on this iPhone –" *splash*

lol

some cool barcelona pics:

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/post/11631868693/the-astounding-design-of-eixample-barcelona

that rules

salt lake city's grid is next-level in the sense that it isn't determined by or built around a geographic landmark of any kind and the grid always conforms to absolute directions. also, the streets are insanely wide. it's like living in a slightly deranged thought.

― ah, how quaint (Matt P), Tuesday, January 3, 2012 4:23 PM

you know as well as I that SLC is the slightly deranged thought...OF A PROPHET

When I lived in SLC I developed the helpful directional mnemonic that the wussy mountains are in the west and the excellent mountains are in the east

There are two one-way streets here where all the strip malls and car dealerships crowd the interstate. I can't ever remember if Landers is the one on the left or if Warden is the one in the west.

hate grids

If you don't like grids, move to Boston. Every street seems to wind around crazily; I'm told this is because they follow the path of ancient pre-paved roads.

Washington DC has a good layout IMO - a grid intersected by several diagonal roads, with roundabouts at busy interchanges. The grid streets are sequentialy numbered for north-south roads, lettered for east-west, so you can easily find your address without resorting to a map or GPS.

I enjoy cities where directions are given by cardinal direction, but the grid actually aligns to se/nw or sw/ne.

Fact: It was Thomas Jefferson who pressed for dividing the land in this country like blocks and not the crazy way like in New England and Mid-Atlantic states.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/54477

And a response (from the commenters) I'm with Knight.

http://www.thegreatamericangrid.com/2012/02/26/choose-the-grid-absolutely-2/

yeah defining "land use efficiency" by "useable private land" is v. misleading when 'useable how' matters more than 'how much'

I want to learn more abt city grids! What should I read or watch?

http://www.mcny.org/shop/84/233/10720/the-greatest-grid-the-master-plan-of-manhattan-1811-2011.html