[LINK] "Size Does Matter, or Not"

[rfmcdonald]

Landscape + Urbanism takes a look at the disadvantages (and, inadvertantly, advantages) of the grid in urban design, referring to the article "Beloved and Abandoned: A Platting Named Portland">.

"Urbanists and romanticists have expressed equally strong sentiments about Paris, London, Barcelona, Curitiba, Amsterdam and Venice. Of the six, only Barcelona adopted the Hippodamian grid in 1859 for its vast expansion, and Venice, without a classic grid, is the preeminent pedestrian haven, yet neither city matches the urbanist’s praise for Portland. Whatever the mix of reasons, Portland dominates the American planners' imagination feelings and talk. Disentangling this intangible realm can be an elusive goal; grounds and figures on the other hand may produce tangible results."

A grid alone is not the recipe for success, and in practice there are few pure iterations of the grid, with zigs, zags, curvy spots, the axial geometry of Ladds addition, and many other quirks. As a fan of the grid for wayfinding and layout, there's something to be said for the rigorous adherance to the formality, which much theory has been laid out in curvy, suburban blah. Some support of the grid: "The degree of connectivity of the street network could count as another practical reason. 'Network', by definition, is a set of linked components, whether a spider-net, a fishnet, or the Internet - all networks connect. What distinguishes them is the manner, geometry and frequency of connection: leaf, tree, blood vessels, telephone and web networks are dendrite, hierarchical (fractal) but fishnets are not. Portland’s is a dense fishnet with nodes at every 200 feet, which produce 360 intersections per square mile -- the highest ratio in America, and 3 to 5 times higher than current developments. For example, older and newer areas in Toronto, typical of most cities, range from 72 to 119 intersections per square mile in suburbs and 163 to 190 in older areas with a grid. As connectivity rose in importance as a planning principle, Portland’s grid emerges as a supreme example.

Coupled with connectivity, its rectilinear geometry is indisputably more advantageous for navigation on foot, car or bike than any alternatives. Visitors often feel lost and disoriented in medieval towns and in contemporary suburbs and this feeling leads to anxiety and even fear and a sense that all is not well."