Sacramento Suburban street design pisses me off (homes, neighbourhoods)

[sacramento916]

I don't think the problems here is really the street patterns. The problem is that we just hate the suburban homes that line them. I'm sure if we had the same street patterns packed with density or skyscrapers, most everyone here would love them.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by DMenscha

By all means every street should be arrow straight.

Yeah, kinda like the streets winding through the little boxes made of ticky-tacky all crowded together in the flood plains they call suburbia, right? Talk about uninmaginative mazes. But available in any one of several colors as long as you like tan and various shapes and sizes as long as you like stucco and can live with one of three or four floor plans as well as labor-saving devices like postage stamp front and rear yards.

Do people really consider that living when you have to pull in your shoulders to walk between your house and your neighbor's and the prominant frontal feature is your garage (aka: snout houses)?

[KC6ZLV]

Most of the suburbs east and northeast of Sacramento aren't subject to flooding. It is the suburbs immediately around Sacramento that have the potential of flooding.

[Mr. Opinionated]

Originally Posted by sacramento916

What can I say? I wish Sac was more urban too.

I have to admit, so do I. But to be fair, I understand that high traffic volume might not have been as much of a concern back when some areas were being planned, as it has become today.

[K-Luv]

Originally Posted by Majin

All of the streets snake all over the place and none of them connect, you can only get in and out of neighborhoods through major artieals, and every path you can take from destination to destination takes twice as long as it should.

And did I mention the traffic?

It reduces the ability to speed through the neighborhood, reduces need (and maintenance) of speed bumps and stop signs, and prevents commuters from cutting through, reducing noise. They are designed to get people home, not to be thoroughfares.

[fresnofresno]

To tell you the truth that is how most of Sacramento is in my opinion, very suburban. I just recently had to take a state test in Rancho Cordova and got lost even though I had the directions in hand. The streets seem to curve (for no good reason) and intersections at times were not of the traditional approach. It didn't surprise me to see that downtown Rancho is nothing but an office park, what a joke. Sacramento is literally surrounded by places like this.

[wburg]

There was (and to some extent still is) a school of thought that curved, irregular streets are more soothing to the human soul than street grids, even though a grid is simpler and more navigable. Speed and traffic control are other reasons often cited, although typically suburban streets (even residential) are so wide and smoothly curved that cars can speed through them with relative ease, while a properly-designed grid street, with narrow lanes, parking and bike lanes, limits driving speeds more effectively. Grid systems also distribute traffic among multiple routes--and being able to select different routes, rather than the same way every time, makes walking and biking more enjoyable as well as more efficient. Some suburban lot plans deliberately had limited access points (like River Park, which only has two roads leading in or out) in order to limit access to a group I will refer to as "Those People."

There is no rhyme or reason to most suburban street design plans because they were typically built outside the city limits in order to avoid city regulation--then the city later grew to include the suburb, and had to graft the new street plan onto the existing street system in some haphazard fashion. They are also often designed to minimize the amount of land used by streets, in order to sell more housing lots on the same original lot, but at the cost of ease of access.

[DMenscha]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Yeah, kinda like the streets winding through the little boxes made of ticky-tacky all crowded together in the flood plains they call suburbia, right? Talk about uninmaginative mazes. But available in any one of several colors as long as you like tan and various shapes and sizes as long as you like stucco and can live with one of three or four floor plans as well as labor-saving devices like postage stamp front and rear yards.

Do people really consider that living when you have to pull in your shoulders to walk between your house and your neighbor's and the prominant frontal feature is your garage (aka: snout houses)?

They must, so many of them live there. Major reason I live in the country.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by DMenscha

They must, so many of them live there. Major reason I live in the country.

Major reason we live in the country as well - room to stretch and breathe.

[Mr. Opinionated]

Originally Posted by wburg

...A properly-designed grid street, with narrow lanes, parking and bike lanes, limits driving speeds more effectively. Grid systems also distribute traffic among multiple routes--and being able to select different routes, rather than the same way every time, makes walking and biking more enjoyable as well as more efficient.
...There is no rhyme or reason to most suburban street design plans because they were typically built outside the city limits in order to avoid city regulation--then the city later grew to include the suburb, and had to graft the new street plan onto the existing street system in some haphazard fashion. They are also often designed to minimize the amount of land used by streets, in order to sell more housing lots on the same original lot, but at the cost of ease of access.

This is what I had to learn to appreciate, in the interest of fairness, coming from a huge traffic-oriented grid like Los Angeles. Thanks again
Mr. Burg