City with a Small Downtown Grid with a Larger Suburban Street Layout?

[Avalanchez71]

Name a city with a small centralized grid that has a small city type grid but grew much larger with suburban type streets?

[Max Rockatansky]

Fresno is a good example of this phenomenon.  The original railroad siding layout is slanted in downtown but changes to a more modern east/west and north/south in the more modern areas of the City. 

[Occidental Tourist]

Los Angeles
San Diego
Sacramento
Fresno
Bakersfield
Riverside
Oxnard
Ventura
Escondido
San Jose
Oakland
Burbank
Redlands
Temecula
Corona
Fullerton
Torrance
Stockton
Modesto

[CapeCodder]

Champaign, IL

[1995hoo]

I'm not sure whether it fits what you're looking for, but the first place that came to mind was Denver. Downtown is laid out on a diagonal (similar to Washington DC but without the traffic circles and major avenues cutting through the grid at various angles) and then it abruptly changes to an E—W/N—S grid.

[SkyPesos]

Fresno is a good example of this phenomenon.  The original railroad siding layout is slanted in downtown but changes to a more modern east/west and north/south in the more modern areas of the City. 

With the grid shifting from a slant to standard NS/EW, the first city that comes to my mind for this is Denver.

Definitely not to a suburban layout, but you can see on a map where Manhattan's grid shifts from the unorganized pattern in Lower Manhattan to an orderly grid north of there. The grid also shifts in different places, like on the east side, the grid shifts at around Houston St, but on the west, it changes at 14th St.

[6a]

Charlotte comes to my mind as a good contender.

[webny99]

I had a different interpretation of what the OP meant.

I thought they meant a city with a tightly-knit grid in the downtown area and then a much more spread out grid in the suburbs.

The first two cities that come to mind under that definition are Boise and Detroit (both imperfect examples, but on the right track, I believe).

[paulthemapguy]

Plainfield, IL and New Lenox, IL are two examples of outer suburbs that started as small towns with a tight downtown street grid, then got surrounded by new-age space-hogging street networks caused by urban sprawl.

[Avalanchez71]

I am looking for a tight grid downtown/centralized area then an obvious shift to a suburban type layout.  Maybe a city that was a small town then grew to something big later.

[Ned Weasel]

I am looking for a tight grid downtown/centralized area then an obvious shift to a suburban type layout.  Maybe a city that was a small town then grew to something big later.

This describes most cities, to be honest.

[Avalanchez71]

I am looking for a tight grid downtown/centralized area then an obvious shift to a suburban type layout.  Maybe a city that was a small town then grew to something big later.

This describes most cities, to be honest.

So true; I realized this after typing the response.  May a town was formed but didn't grow until many years later? 

[1995hoo]

I'm not necessarily sure what you have in mind as to a "suburban type layout." Do you mean something that's simply less rigid than a grid system? Or do you mean something with a lot of "No Outlet" neighborhoods, cul-de-sacs, etc.? Both could be valid–here in Northern Virginia, for example, Arlington County is more of the former (and certainly has some areas that are more urban in nature than suburban, despite being considered a suburb), whereas Fairfax County has a lot of the latter (my own neighborhood included–multiple ways out on foot or on a bike, but only one vehicle-accessible way out).

If you have the former in mind, Washington DC could be a possibility. Spring Valley and some of the surrounding areas in far Northwest have a street system that departs from the grid system used elsewhere in the city (and the houses are further apart and give more of a suburban feel to the area). There are some similar areas in the parts of DC closest to Silver Spring, Maryland, as well.

[Avalanchez71]

I'm not necessarily sure what you have in mind as to a "suburban type layout." Do you mean something that's simply less rigid than a grid system? Or do you mean something with a lot of "No Outlet" neighborhoods, cul-de-sacs, etc.? Both could be valid–here in Northern Virginia, for example, Arlington County is more of the former (and certainly has some areas that are more urban in nature than suburban, despite being considered a suburb), whereas Fairfax County has a lot of the latter (my own neighborhood included–multiple ways out on foot or on a bike, but only one vehicle-accessible way out).

If you have the former in mind, Washington DC could be a possibility. Spring Valley and some of the surrounding areas in far Northwest have a street system that departs from the grid system used elsewhere in the city (and the houses are further apart and give more of a suburban feel to the area). There are some similar areas in the parts of DC closest to Silver Spring, Maryland, as well.

Looking at lots of cul-de-sacs, curved streets wherein a straight street would fit, dead end type streets and the like.

[Henry]

I'd put up St. Louis as another.

[SkyPesos]

I am looking for a tight grid downtown/centralized area then an obvious shift to a suburban type layout.  Maybe a city that was a small town then grew to something big later.

A lot of more prominent suburbs in a city are like that; they were towns by itself before the sprawl caught up, and there are standard American suburban neighborhoods with cul-de-sacs and other features surrounding it. An easy way to see this is the change from street suffixes; the small downtown areas normally use "street" or "avenue", while the surrounding suburban streets use pretty much anything else. Note that method won't work 100% of the time. Here's a short list of the infinite examples of this:
Dublin, OH
Powell, OH
Hamilton, OH
Mason, OH
Loveland, OH
Montgomery, OH
Carmel, IN
Fishers, IN
St. Charles, MO
O'Fallon, MO
Clayton, MO

[GaryV]

It's not just a difference between the central city and its suburbs.  I can think of several examples in my area where most of a suburban city follows a grid pattern (perhaps with some diagonal arterials), but there are subdivisions within the city that are built as loops, circles, cul-de-sacs, etc.  It's mostly a matter of when the subdivision was developed.  Or for that matter, redeveloped.  There are some revitalized areas along the river in Detroit that have been laid out in a non-grid pattern.

[Avalanchez71]

Dublin and Fishers are good examples.  I think Brentwood, TN and Spring Hill, TN are other good examples.

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

Many Sunbelt cities that saw the majority of their growth in the post-1945 suburban era exhibit this development pattern. Plano TX and Baton Rouge LA are good examples.

[democratic nole]

Tallahassee would fit that mold. The population in 1930 was 10,700. The 2019 estimate is 194,500. Thus, the city has a fairly compact grid downtown which yields as one exits downtown.



https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tallahassee,+FL/@30.4434801,-84.3013997,13.45z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88ec8a5187124b53:0xebee077ad4fdb1f8!8m2!3d30.4382559!4d-84.2807329

[roadfro]

Las Vegas is probably a good example. It's downtown grid is on a diagonal, due to the original town site being laid out parallel and perpendicular to the railroad. Outside of downtown, most of the major streets mostly follow a grid pattern, since they are section-line arterials. As you get more suburban, you'll find the larger grid starts to deviate and break down or disappears completely, especially through some of the master-planned communities developed in the 1990s or later.