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Cities with good street grids

Started by mrpablue, May 07, 2018, 03:05:07 AM

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Stephane Dumas

Quote from: Flint1979 on May 07, 2018, 03:56:02 AM
Detroit. I love the way the five spoke streets branch out from downtown.

I spotted this vintage movie who explained the five spoke street branch of Detroit along with the street pattern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSTXqNhSglc


tradephoric

The end of this video has some more history about the Detroit street network, focusing on the widening of Woodward Avenue.  Churches were literally sliced in half and their front facade rolled back 30 feet to make room for the "wider Woodward" as it was known.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRWyx0NtpSQ

jakeroot

Quote from: tradephoric on May 25, 2018, 10:33:08 PM
The end of this video has some more history about the Detroit street network, focusing on the widening of Woodward Avenue.  Churches were literally sliced in half and their front facade rolled back 30 feet to make room for the "wider Woodward" as it was known.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRWyx0NtpSQ

Blessed be thy Michigan Left, for improving flow at the cost of churches.

US 89

Salt Lake City's grid makes it easy to get around with the numbering, but there aren't any diagonal streets. There are a few streets that don't run exactly N/S or E/W like Foothill and Highland, but both of those are essentially N/S roads. Put it this way: there isn't a single road where it's difficult to determine whether it's a N/S or E/W road.

It's also helpful that all of the suburbs within Salt Lake County use the same numbering system. In Davis or Utah County, that's another story.

jon daly

Quote from: Rothman on May 07, 2018, 11:11:25 PM
Boston, 'cause $%#& you.

Amen. But I do like DC's grid for historical reasons.

DaBigE

Quote from: mgk920 on May 07, 2018, 08:36:20 PM
Milwaukee has a very good street grid, nearly as good as Chicago's.

Away from the hills, the Los Angeles area also has a nice grid layout.

Mike

I'm kinda surprised you didn't give at least honorable mention to Appleton, WI.
"We gotta find this road, it's like Bob's road!" - Rabbit, Twister

mgk920

Quote from: DaBigE on May 26, 2018, 08:37:56 PM
Quote from: mgk920 on May 07, 2018, 08:36:20 PM
Milwaukee has a very good street grid, nearly as good as Chicago's.

Away from the hills, the Los Angeles area also has a nice grid layout.

Mike

I'm kinda surprised you didn't give at least honorable mention to Appleton, WI.

The city (along with a surrounding township that also uses Appleton's grid) is OK, but metro-wide (Kaukauna through Neenah, Sherwood through Greenville, etc) is one of the absolute worst addressing messes in the entire midwestern USA.  There are somewhere around 12-15 different address number grids in use in the metro area, including many duplicating street names with duplicate valid address number ranges.  Most of the area's munis use their own grids.

These numbering grids do intermingle, too, with the grids literally changing from house to house to house in some parts of the metro area.  I consider it to be a serious life-safety issue that will eventually have to be corrected.

:banghead:

Mike

DaBigE

Quote from: mgk920 on May 27, 2018, 12:08:56 AM
Quote from: DaBigE on May 26, 2018, 08:37:56 PM
Quote from: mgk920 on May 07, 2018, 08:36:20 PM
Milwaukee has a very good street grid, nearly as good as Chicago's.

Away from the hills, the Los Angeles area also has a nice grid layout.

Mike

I'm kinda surprised you didn't give at least honorable mention to Appleton, WI.

The city (along with a surrounding township that also uses Appleton's grid) is OK, but metro-wide (Kaukauna through Neenah, Sherwood through Greenville, etc) is one of the absolute worst addressing messes in the entire midwestern USA.  There are somewhere around 12-15 different address number grids in use in the metro area, including many duplicating street names with duplicate valid address number ranges.  Most of the area's munis use their own grids.

These numbering grids do intermingle, too, with the grids literally changing from house to house to house in some parts of the metro area.  I consider it to be a serious life-safety issue that will eventually have to be corrected.

:banghead:

Mike

Fair enough. I was looking purely from the physical/aesthetic infrastructure standpoint, which has a small share of hiccups itself.
"We gotta find this road, it's like Bob's road!" - Rabbit, Twister

michravera

Quote from: mrpablue on May 07, 2018, 03:05:07 AM
What street grids are the most attractive to you? One of my favorites is Patterson, CA.

Sacramento is nearly perfect out to 29th and W streets and very consistent out to 44th street and 44th avenue (the numbered avenues start after Y street). The east area is fairly consistent out to about 70th street and the southeast area out to the low 80s. The addressing scheme (which is pretty close to 100 numbers equals 100 meters) is pretty good most of the way along Folsom Blvd out to Folsom and on Freeport and Riverside Blvds out to Elk Grove.

abefroman329

Quote from: Super Mateo on May 25, 2018, 05:36:42 PM
Quote from: paulthemapguy on May 07, 2018, 04:12:16 PM
248th Ave drives my girlfriend and me nuts.  Why is there this numbered street 8 miles away from any analogous street name on the same grid system!?  Give the street an actual name!

The road is in Will County.  In Will County, rural street addresses use the same grid as Chicago.  So it is indeed the State-and-Madison grid, not the 1st Avenue stuff that occurs in places like Broadview.  Unincorporated areas in Kane and DuPage Counties also use the Chicago State/Madison grid.  And as Brandon mentioned, some municipalities like Plainfield still use that default grid instead of instituting their own.  If you look over to Tinley Park, there is a whole series of north-south numbered Avenues that also refer to Chicago's grid--NOT Broadview's.

It sure does refer to Chicago.  Broadview has overlapping longitudes with us, but our avenue numbers are much higher. And in a few cases, Tinley actually uses the Chicago street names as well, like New England, Sayre, Odell, Oketo, Olcott, etc.  All addresses are just extensions of the Chicago system.  Most of the village here is in Cook County.

Will County, with a few exceptions, uses the Chicago system throughout the county.  They could get addresses as high as 26400 W or 37500 S.  It is unusual to see 248th Avenue in a place with no other N/S avenues, though.

Why the northern suburbs don't do it, I don't know.  It would certainly make finding things much easier up there.

Since Evanston doesn't, it wouldn't make sense for any suburbs directly north of Evanston to do it.



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