Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
The Romans did it right.
Grids are superior. Spilled spaghetti streets drive me insane.
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But on the other hand, all of those “organic” roads, not the side streets but the main, ancient ones, actually go somewhere. They connect one significant point of interest to another. And that has its own benefits, particularly for wandering. Anyone can figure out how to get from 3rd and 15th to 7th and 43rd, but what exactly is in either of those locations?
In those aerial photos above, I can instantly identify exactly what I’m looking at. Victoria, St Paul’s, Seven Dials, Trafalgar Square. It would be a pain in the ass for a tourist trying to drive around London (but then why the fuck would you do that?), but it creates places rather than just intersections.
New York has “places” mostly where the grid is broken - Washington Square Park, Union Square, Madison Square Park, Columbus Circle, even Rockefeller Center (which has pedestrian “streets” that cut through a megablock).