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That's funny! I've read just the opposite, many times, on this forum. Grids increase walkability, random makes it harder. And I'm inclined to believe it. If you have to walk 2 miles of curving streets to get somewhere that is one mile away, that's inefficient, and probably enough to discourage a lot of people.
That's what some seem to believe, but I think that's wrong. When people are walking they like to have an easily attainable goal in sight. Terminating vistas serve as visible, attainable goalposts towards your destination. People like having that sense of enclosure. They don't like looking at a huge long straight street that seems to go on forever without end. It's an uncomfortable feeling that makes you feel overwhelmed, somewhat similar to the sensation you get when looking down the edge of a steep cliff. It makes you nauseous.
I don't know if there's any research about this. Certainly, some posters on here have talked about how hard it was when they were kids to get to their friends' houses on foot b/c they weren't on a grid system. When I walk, my goal is to get to my destination as quickly as possible, unless I'm just out "taking a walk".
Funny. When I'm walking I like to have a long vista because I can see where I'm going and what's ahead; a sense of enclosure for me makes me feel like I'm trapped in a labyrinth, which isn't a good feeling. Don't get me wrong - I think streets with a sense of enclosure can be great for walkability, but all other things being equal a straight road is better in my view (or maybe a slightly curving road; you wouldn't want motorists to get highway hypnosis, would you?).
As for walking curved streets, as long as you know where you're going I don't see how curved vs. not curved vs. random would make it any more difficult, assuming that your destination is at the same distance in all three cases. And if you don't know where you are or where you're going, either you're crazy* or the street signs are insufficient .
*By that I mean you must be crazy to walk to a place while not knowing how to get there.
Funny. When I'm walking I like to have a long vista because I can see where I'm going and what's ahead; a sense of enclosure for me makes me feel like I'm trapped in a labyrinth, which isn't a good feeling. Don't get me wrong - I think streets with a sense of enclosure can be great for walkability, but all other things being equal a straight road is better in my view (or maybe a slightly curving road; you wouldn't want motorists to get highway hypnosis, would you?).
As for walking curved streets, as long as you know where you're going I don't see how curved vs. not curved vs. random would make it any more difficult, assuming that your destination is at the same distance in all three cases. And if you don't know where you are or where you're going, either you're crazy* or the street signs are insufficient .
*By that I mean you must be crazy to walk to a place while not knowing how to get there.
Linear streets with long vistas tend to encourage a lot of driving. When the destination is not in sight, or when prominent goalposts towards the destination are lacking, then a person's first natural instinct is to get in their car and drive, because it is too far away to comfortably walk. Why? Just human nature and the way our brains are wired.
Block grids are ideal for moving large amounts of automobile traffic fast and efficiently. Long stretches of straight asphalt roads are ideal for driving because it allows you to maximize your vehicle speed. As a driver you don't want to see a lot of curves, turns and bends along the way because these things slow you down. And the more car traffic you have, the less pedestrian activity you will see. Why? Again, goes back to human nature. People simply don't like walking alongside a lot of vehicle traffic, for the most part.
That's what some seem to believe, but I think that's wrong. When people are walking they like to have an easily attainable goal in sight. Terminating vistas serve as visible, attainable goalposts towards your destination. People like having that sense of enclosure. They don't like looking at a huge long straight street that seems to go on forever without end. It's an uncomfortable feeling that makes you feel overwhelmed, somewhat similar to the sensation you get when looking down the edge of a steep cliff. It makes you nauseous.
I always found the non-grid parts of the Washington DC network very confusing. Am I headed NE, SE, NW, or SW? If you give me an address in my gridded area I can ball park how many block N/S it is and how many blocks E/W it is from my current location.
Linear streets with long vistas tend to encourage a lot of driving. When the destination is not in sight, or when prominent goalposts towards the destination are lacking, then a person's first natural instinct is to get in their car and drive, because it is too far away to comfortably walk. Why? Just human nature and the way our brains are wired.
Block grids are ideal for moving large amounts of automobile traffic fast and efficiently. Long stretches of straight asphalt roads are ideal for driving because it allows you to maximize your vehicle speed. As a driver you don't want to see a lot of curves, turns and bends along the way because these things slow you down. And the more car traffic you have, the less pedestrian activity you will see. Why? Again, goes back to human nature. People simply don't like walking alongside a lot of vehicle traffic, for the most part.
Do you have any validation for that? I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but this forum tends to be very "pro-grid"; the Urban Planning bloggers (not to be confused with real urban planners) tend to be very pro-grid, etc. I don't have time right now to research WHY, but I know what is.
After living in London, UK and Washing DC area; I love the grid pattern. Nothing counters common sense more than random streets going which ever direction, changing names after every intersection. If they want to put curves or something then fine, but at least if the street starts off going west, it should continue doing so, not then throw a curve and go north, than over to northwest, and change its name after every major intersection.
What I do think that in a gridded city, unless some streets are quite narrow or deliberate traffic calming measures, you're liable get through traffic on every street. People are also confusing ungridded old cities with the curvy roads in ungridded automobile cities. Ungridded cities still have mostly interconnected, relatively straight streets; people had to walk and as Katiana said most wouldn't deliberately want to walk double the distance for any percieved aesthetic reasons. For example, here's London, which is ungridded and with interconnected streets:
As long as one knows where they're going, a short, direct path is possible. There's also a street hierachy, the distinction between what would be a useful through street is clear; most residential streets would be less convenient while the arterials are better connected. There are also some diagonal routes, so it's possible that the lack of a grid makes some paths shorter. The arterials all seem to be focused on the city center and radiate outward, unlike a modern American gridded city, it's more obvious to see where the center city is, although London is more centralized than those so the advantage is more obvious. In particularly, the main roads seem to radiate from the City of London "the Square Mile", which was reasonable maybe two centuries ago. The center of the city has drifted somewhat westwards into Westminster. Whoops.
Back home in New England, the road pattern connecting towns is similar — main roads connect town centers, and the local streets in older areas are interconnected but only sometimes gridded. Here's Boston's North End perhaps the oldest urban neighborhood in New England:
Just across the Charles River into Cambridge, you can see hints of a grid system. But overlain onto is a main road system with a number of diagonal road that converge onto squares. Harvard Square, the oldest part of the city, has main roads radiating from it similar to the way they do from the City of London. Central Square has both Western Ave and River St converging to it. You can see hints of that pattern in a ring around the city center regardless of the municipality. A few similar squares are visible in Somerville.
Are these layout actually worse than a gridded city? Depends on one's point of view, but I don't think there's anything negative for pedestrians or transit. While confusing to outsiders, this interconnected layout is convenient, and may also be good at reducing through traffic on residential streets while still pedestrian friendly.
While I said pre-automobile development had straight, non-curvy streets, there are some interesting exceptions. Here's Aspinwall Hill, a development built near the end of the 19th century:
Those are some inconvenient routes for a pedestrian! It was built for the rich ?, who would have probably owned a horse and carriage, so the shortest distance was less of an issue; the developer thought the nearly circle-like was more appealing looking:
Many at the time panned the design, calling it silly and impractical. Even the rich couldn't take their horse and carriage everytime, a more practical design for pedestrians was necessary. Not everyone in a household might have access to a horse and carriage, and some might want to walk not just to neighborhood houses and shops but a local streetcar line (the main one to downtown Boston still exists, shown by the "T" stops on the map). So the developer added straightpaths for a shorter route for pedestrians. This is sometimes done in new curvy suburban developments today, except the distance to store or transit is often longer than Aspinwall Hill.
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