Interesting street grids

[Brandon]

Atlanta and Boston street grdis are practically non-existant. Chcagoland as a whole has a pretty impressive street grid.

Chicagoland's grid is best toward the south and southwest.  Toward the north and northwest, the grid breaks down completely in places.  To the south, it keeps on going from State and Madison to the Will-Kankakee County line with the same address system.  The furthest south road in the system is County Line Rd along said county line at 37500 South and the grid goes west to the Will-Kendall/Grundy County line, also a County Line Rd (aka Will Rd in some places) at 26400 West.  At the point where the two intersect, one is about 56.6 miles southwest of the intersection of State and Madison in Chicago's Loop where the grid begins.

[TheStranger]

Despite its small geographic size, San Francisco manages to have multiple street grids!

- the downtown/Pacific Heights/Haight-Ashbury street grid, north of Market Street and starting approximately at Stanyan Street to the west
- the South of Market/Potrero Hill/Mission/Castro/Noe Valley street grid, with numbered streets from 1 to 30 and north-south streets sometimes named after other states (Rhode Island, Arkansas, Vermont, Kansas)
- the Richmond/Sunset grid, with numbered avenues from 2 to 48 (1 skipped for "Arguello Boulevard", 13 skipped in favor of "Funston" and "La Playa" supplanting 49th) and some alphabetical streets (Anza-Cabrillo in the Richmond, Irving-Yorba in the Sunset)
- the Excelsior grid, where streets are named for outside locales (i.e. Geneva Avenue, Persia Avenue)
- two Hunters Point grids, one with alphabetical streets (Donohue to Upton) and alphabetical avenues (Cargo to Yosemite), and another with alphabetical streets in the shipyard area itself from A to J and then R

Some grid crossover does exist:

3rd Street extends way past its spot at the start of the south-of-Market grid, intersecting other numbered streets in the Potrero Hill area, and then intersecting part of the Hunters Point grid

Geary Boulevard and California Street continue from the downtown grid into the Richmond grid

7th Street and 5th Street have short extensions from the South of Market grid into the downtown grid

Van Ness Avenue starts in the Potrero Hill area at Cesar Chavez (Army) Street and continues north into the downtown street grid

Castro Street continues a few blocks north of Market Street into the downtown grid, before ending at Divisadero and Waller

[Chris]

Grid systems in Europe are not very common because most cities grew organically over the centuries. Most grids were either planned after destruction (such as a big fire, bombing, etc.) or by megalomanic rulers long ago.

Athens, Greece


Barcelona, Spain


Bremen, Germany


Budapest, Hungary


Mannheim, Germany


Turin, Italy

[english si]

Barcelona's grid is being built one bit at a time. Redevelopments have to use the grid pattern, not the existing pattern. You can see it 'breaks down' in places - that's simply as they haven't got to that bit yet.

As Chris has said, we don't tend to build grids here in Europe, however:
Glasgow's City Centre has a grid pattern of a sort.
Victorian terraces and pre-WW2 development tended to be built on grids - Southampton is a fine example of where many small areas with their own grids exist as different parts got built by different people.
The Victorian parts of Luton is clearly based on grid systems (like all Victorian terraces)
Letchworth Garden City is a pre-WW2 new town, and has this loose grid pattern.
Finally, the best example of a large scale grid system in the UK, Milton Keynes is built around a grid system of main roads. The grid roads follow the lie of the land, so aren't straight (with the exception of V4 Watling Street - built by the Romans). Horizontal (e-w ish)  'ways' have H numbers and have names ending in 'Way'. Vertical roads (n-s ish) have names ending in street and have V numbers. All the roundabouts inside the new town are named, and at them grid-roads' numbers are signed. Of course, outside the town centre, many the estates between the grid roads are classic 80s and later housing estates - a mesh of roads that look like spaghetti has been dropped.

[hm insulators]

In the Phoenix area, many north-south streets are numbered, but you have to watch your streets and avenues! Using Central Avenue as a "base street," if you go east, you hit 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street and so forth. Going west, you hit 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue and so on. Like I said, you have to be careful! It's one thing to look for a business that's on 1st Street but it's on 1st Avenue, but if you're trying to find something on 75th Avenue and it's on 75th Street, you're about fifteen miles away from where you should be!

[Bickendan]

^That makes cardinal pre/suffixes very nice. To use Portland as an example, numbered all streets avenues run north-south, and increase away from the Willamette, meaning there are two of each number. Of course, the difference between SW/NW 49th Ave and SE/NE 49th Ave are very obvious. A handful of avenues in SW/NW/NE/SE are named (SE/NE 39th Ave is now Chavez Blvd, SE/NE Grand Ave is the same as 4th). All avenues in the N 'quadrant' are named. All streets run east-west and are all named.

[BigMattFromTexas]

REALLY?? No one has mentioned Palm Jumeirah in Dubai? This isn't really a grid, but it has to do with streets and layouts, I wanna go to Dubai and go to Burj Khalifa.
**PICTURE**

BigMatt

[agentsteel53]

mmm... conspicuous consumption. 

[BigMattFromTexas]

???

[agentsteel53]

???

conspicuous consumption is the spending of money in showy manners, just to show the world your ability to spend money, and therefore your excess of it. 

apparently, if you lined up all the penises in Dubai, she still couldn't find it without an electron microscope.

[corco]

conspicuous consumption is the spending of money in showy manners, just to show the world your ability to spend money, and therefore your excess of it. 

Wait.. are you saying that this is unnecessary?

[agentsteel53]

Wait.. are you saying that this is unnecessary?

dunno, ask Rorschach.