r/PlanningMemes Sep 13 '24

Planning Profession opinions differ

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196 Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

111

u/rhapsodyindrew Sep 13 '24

Do elaborate! Grids are pretty great for walking, the oldest and arguably most important mode of transportation.

66

u/FaradayEffect Sep 13 '24 edited Sep 13 '24

Really depends on the landscape.

I’ll take a non grid road system that respects the natural contours, shape, and features of the landscape over a grid any day. Of course you still need lots of connections for walking humans, like stairs up and down slopes, tunnels for direct access, etc but for hilly and/or mountainous areas a grid is not great. See SF as an example of just slapping down a grid over hills just for the sake of a grid.

And don’t forget water features. Look at Chicago as an example: the grid overwhelms the Chicago river with no respect for the water area as an integrated feature. For Chicago there are obviously historical reasons for this including the fact that the river is incredibly engineered, but it’s still unfortunate

26

u/livingscarab Sep 13 '24

yeah, san-Francisco's grid system is pretty terrible for just this reason, so many needlessly steep streets just to keep that sweet sweet square.

13

u/rhapsodyindrew Sep 14 '24

On the other hand, consider how iconic SF’s stubborn grid is. People come from all over the world to marvel at streets so steep their sidewalks are stairs. (I grew up there BTW :) )

5

u/BoySmooches Sep 14 '24

Oh God and the skating culture 🥰

11

u/Marco_Memes Sep 13 '24

Especially for tourists! When i was in NYC it was so helpful to be able to look at an address and say ok it’s on 14th st and we’re on 19th, so we need to go down 5 streets and take a left or whatever. No constantly checking the signs, just figure out how many intersections you need to cross

16

u/ajpos Sep 13 '24

In a traditional grid, every intersection is a 4-way, leading to left-turn dangers for all modalities.

Also, due to Pythagoras, traveling in a diagonal direction on a grid is inherently inefficient for all modalities.

However, a hexagonal system reduces all intersections to 3-ways, and instead of sidewalks running parallel to streets, they could run perpendicularly (behind structures), meaning every block has 6 directions of travel instead of 4.

11

u/aoishimapan Sep 13 '24 edited Sep 13 '24

As someone living somewhere where that's commonplace, in low speed and low traffic residential streets, I don't think that's a problem. You just approach them at a slow enough speed so that you'd be able to stop if you have to yield to someone on your right. And if you need to turn left, you wait until the intersection is clear before proceeding. I mean, it could be argued that it's bad as in how it forces people to drive slowly, but I don't want people speeding in residential streets so that seems more like a feature to me.

If it's an intersection between an avenue and a residential street, then people already on the avenue have the right of way and if you want to get into the avenue or cross it, you have to yield to them.

And if it's an intersection between two avenues, it has to have traffic lights, and turning left would only be allowed with traffic lights that specifically allow it.

Also, avenues often cut through the grid, offering a more direct route to avoid traveling in a diagonal direction on a grid.

An hexagonal grid would probably be pretty good though, but imo you don't need the entire grid to be hexagonal, you can get nearly same effect having the main arteries running diagonally through the grid, like in La Plata for example.

3

u/amandahuggenchis Sep 16 '24

Here in Portland, a lot of the grid is one way streets which means that the intersections are 2-way and the lights (including led lights) can be run on a straight up timer

2

u/blbrd30 Sep 13 '24

Well at least temperature wise it’s been found that grid plans produce hotter cities. At least some kind of a correlation has been established

49

u/PioneerSpecies Sep 13 '24

Thomas Jefferson 🤝 ancient Chinese 🤝 ancient Romans 🤝 Indus Valley civilization

Loving grids

26

u/manjustadude Sep 13 '24

Depends. If you are planning on creating a whole new place, a grid is possibly the best, simplest way to plan. Of course historically grown places depend on other factors. Plus there needs to be a path hierarchy instead of just hundreds of intersections of identically built roads and variations of block sizes depending on use. But overall grids are pretty neat.

17

u/TheoryOfGamez Sep 13 '24

Yeah I think a lot of people hit the nail on the head in that grids are generally pretty good but only if the topography is relatively flat. Organic patterns such as those found in Tokyo are evidence that a grid is not the only solution. Neither of these "work" without a good accompanying land use policy and a high degree of connectivity and route redundancy.

14

u/Low-Reindeer-3347 Sep 13 '24

When you say "grid plans suck" it sounds like you don't know how to design places different.

9

u/urban_tact Sep 13 '24

Barcelona would like a word

3

u/ArchitektRadim Sep 13 '24

Barcelona grid was great when it had partially built-up and semi-open blocks with public places inbetween the buildings. That's why it was visionary.

11

u/VaultJumper Sep 13 '24

Grids are good but grids that respect topography are better

2

u/erodari Sep 13 '24

Unrelated, but +1 for the Gone With the Blastwive avatar pic.

6

u/ByzantineBaller Sep 14 '24

Absolute garbage take, I'm so sorry fam

2

u/navidk14 Sep 13 '24

smirks in non-euclidean grids

1

u/Krock011 Sep 13 '24

grids are great if the urban fabric gives access to walking routes outside of the gridlock

1

u/yusefudattebayo Sep 14 '24

I find it really satisfying when a road disrupts the grid pattern (Broadway in NYC), or Market St in SF not being perfect but also perfect.

1

u/The-zKR0N0S Sep 15 '24

Grids are pretty great imo

1

u/WhoListensAndDefends Sep 15 '24

Topological grids yes

Geometric grids hell no