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The historical city Savannah Georgia is based on the Oglethorpe plan or grid. Each green square is surrounded by eight residential city blocks that are split by a narrow lane plus four smaller commercial blocks east and west of the square.
I like how these public squares are more or less evenly distributed throughout the city, so there's not just one big square in the middle of the city. It makes the whole city walkable, not just the downtown area. The squares serve a traffic calming function. Cars cannot travel through the square. They have to go around it. A lot of European cities are similarly built around a network of mixed-use market squares, plazas and pedestrian streets that are well-integrated into the urban fabric; the difference is they tend to be ungridded.
The Oglethorpe plan is a step in the right direction, but has a number of shortcomings. Residential and commercial activity are segregated. In practice the multitude of squares in Savannah are not really public squares but are just public parks, albeit very well landscaped and nice-looking public parks. Although the city of Savannah refers to them as squares I think the term is misapplied. Unlike the traditional market plaza or pedestrian plaza they do not serve an economic function. So the Oglethorpe plan could be improved by mixing uses and making the squares true public squares. I think the traditional public plaza or public square is an essential ingredient of good urbanism that is largely missing in North American cities.
The plaza-based layout was probably a nightmare for city planners. The post-war establishment in NA cities were highly fearful of the 20th century civil rights and labor movements, so the theory is they grew to fear public areas that could be used as gathering places for political protest, so they got rid of them. Is there some truth to that? Perhaps.
Or perhaps not.
I've been to Savannah. It's a lovely city. Those "squares" are basically public parks. They have been doing a lot of restoration to the squares lately, according to the guidebooks. (Don't you just hate urban renewal?) Savannah has a huge Civil War history; it's where Sherman's troops, including my great-grandfather, stayed the winter on the "March to the Sea". All the cannons in the parks point north!
As to the bold, quelle nonsense! A town square is common in many small cities in eastern PA on the other side of the mountains. I grew up in union country, western PA steel country. At one time, ~66% of the workers in Beaver County, my home county, belonged to the United Steelworkers. We didn't have "town squares". There are a few towns there that have a public park near the downtown (Beaver, PA), or a small grassy area with a statue or some trees on it in the downtown area (Rochester, PA), but no places like that where large groups of people could gather. I read that somewhere in here: Welcome to Beaver County History Online that at one time ~66% of the workers in Beaver County, my home county, were members of the United Steelworkers. They accomplished that w/o a "town square". When John Kennedy went to my hometown, Beaver Falls, in 1960, he spoke in front of the firehouse. When Jimmy Carter went there in 1980, he spoke in front of the library.
So urban renewal is never good; it's always bad? I don't think you got the sarcasm.
"Urban renewal" has a negative connotation, I don't think many city leaders would use this phrase to describe the work being done. But I did get the sarcasm.
^^Funny, you mentioned cities in your post that caused me to respond as I did. Denver is NOT an exception. Minneapolis, another gridded city, is reputedly one of the most bike friendly cities in the US. There are probably many more, but I do like to talk about what I know. To respond to posts that disagree with yours as "that's an exception" is deflection. I do not need a tutorial about Denver's bike paths. The pictures I posted showed people ON THE STREETS, for the most part.
Minneapolis has 85 miles of off-road paved bikeways, while Denver has over 850. There's no comparison. In terms of the volume of biking infrastructure, no other city comes close.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
A huge criticism of "modern" suburbs, which I have seen over and over on this forum, is that they are not gridded; the streets are not interconnected, etc. While that's not entirely true, either, I have never seen the burbs criticized for having a grid system. Please show some evidence!
While we're on the subject of Denver, let's take a look at the layout of several
Denver suburbs. And what do you know? These are all gridded.
Aurora seems to be a bit less gridded than the others, but still gridded. Most modern suburbs such as Aurora are on a nested grid like Moore OK where the main arterials are gridded and residential collector streets are not.
Moore OK
Last edited by cisco kid; 06-04-2013 at 01:49 PM..
So? I have said, over and over and over again, Denver has a huge grid that carries over to the suburbs. I've said it when others have claimed that grids are the holy grail and that suburbs don't have them. People have argued with me about that. They cherry pick parts of the burbs and say, "that's not on grid". You can search my posts.
You are the first person on this forum, I believe, to claim that grids encourage more traffic and discourage walking. In fact, New Urbanist principles include gridded streets:
Minneapolis has 85 miles of off-road paved bikeways, while Denver has over 850. There's no comparison. In terms of the volume of biking infrastructure, no other city comes close.
While we're on the subject of Denver, let's take a look at the layout of several
Denver suburbs. And what do you know? These are all gridded.
Aurora seems to be a bit less gridded than the others, but still gridded. Most modern suburbs such as Aurora are on a nested grid like Moore OK where the main arterials are gridded and residential collector streets are not.
Moore OK
That's because the main roads follow the township/range grid boundaries, not because of intentional planning. The squares are 1 mile x 1 mile, which is too much to help walkability.
Last edited by winkosmosis; 06-04-2013 at 02:15 PM..
They have been doing a lot of restoration to the squares lately, according to the guidebooks. (Don't you just hate urban renewal?)
Love the sarcasm. "Urban renewal", in the literal sense of renewing an urban area, is conducted and advocated for all the time, but the connotation has become quite bad, in the same way that saying "he's gay" has turned from happiness to homosexuality.
I agree with your point about the grids, that urbanists tout the value of the grid and talk about how suburbs aren't gridded, while completely ignoring the suburbs that are gridded. It's certainly not the grid they have in mind, but it is a grid that confers all the advantages thereof in terms of traffic flow. Most gridded suburbs follow a variation of the fused grid plan, which combines the advantages of a grid system and a street hierarchy system. Whether that's the best system or not is another question - I'm a big fan of it myself, but then again I'm not agog over urbanity like some others here.
I get the point about the suburban grid being too big for walkability, but that implies that grids are not as important as we might be led to believe by people lamenting the lack of a grid in the suburbs.
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