Do you prefer having a grid street planning in your neighborhood/city?

28 comments

1. Yes. Look at Boston, fuck your streets Boston.

2. Absolutely love it! My county is about 75 miles long and only about 25-30 miles wide. The entire area is basically one long grid, it’s almost impossible to get lost. You don’t even need to know the area. Once you drive around you realize what roads go north and south, and which go east to west

3. It was much more important when you needed to be able to find stuff on your own. In a GPS era I don’t think it’s very important.

4. Yes, it’s easy to get around town without any maps

5. Having spent some time in different places, I do have an appreciation for grids and numbered streets for getting around.

6. Yes. If there’s a wreck or construction somewhere, rerouting is trivial.

7. My town was founded by the Spanish, and wasn’t in a grid. Then a fire leveled the town and it was rebuilt into a grid. I don’t have much of an opinion one way or another but I’ve always been curious what my city would look like with it’s original design.

8. For a large city yes. I want an easy to navigate grid when visiting a downtown area or industrial area. I don’t care about the outskirts but the main area of commerce should be a grid always if possible.

   For small to medium cities and the suburbs on the outskirts of big cities not so much. I don’t mind it for where the businesses are but I don’t want all the housing set up as a grid. Might be because I’m from California but I like it when streets wind up hills or end in srangely shaped cul de sacs it gives beighborhoods character.

9. I haven’t lived anywhere that wasn’t grid based, so I can’t say. I don’t mind the grid planning though.

10. Street grids have made my life much, much easier. I recently moved from New England to the Midwest. I don’t get hopelessly lost in the Midwest 🙂

11. grid is much better

12. I live near Chicago. One of the best examples of a grid. I love it.

13. Take a look at Tulsa, Oklahoma. Easy as heck to learn the roads.

14. Grids are soulless copy-paste nonsense imho

15. Grids are great. But giving all the streets numbers instead of names (looking at you Salt Lake City) is a little weird. Makes navigating for a noob a little difficult.

    On the plus side… I always know how many blocks N/S and E/W I am from the Temple.

16. Yes, but it’s just unrealistic for a lot of places due to different terrain.

17. I prefer the chaos of New England roads. I grew up in Indiana so I have respect for the grid but there is just something nice about the chaos of everything on a diagonal and intersections where five roads come together and it is clear city planners just decided “fuck this intersection it can just be chaos.”

18. I like it for a neighborhood or urban city. We have a grid system outside of my neighborhood (a lot of farmland) and it seems like it takes forever to get anywhere because it’s all right angles. Though it does make it easy to navigate.

    sometimes I wish they’d keep the grid but put a few diagonal roads in key places.

19. My city is a mix of grids and winding roads where appropriate based on GEOGRAPHY. I prefer my city be designed as appropriate.

20. When you live on a windy road it makes you feel like you’re in a smaller, quieter neighborhood since you can’t see as far. The grid can work, but you need to have a *lot* of trees to feel as cozy as the windy areas.

21. Yeah it’s really nice! You can get a sense of where everything is located easily and directions are basically built in. DC has a quadrant grid system, everything is alphabetical and numerical.

22. Absolutely not. I like curvy, windy, shitshow roads. I know that sounds sarcastic, it’s not. I prefer it. What’s around the next bend? Who knows?????? I love it. It looks much better to the eye too imo. Grids are boring.

23. I wouldn’t agree with your point that having a grid makes walking easier. Boston’s lack of grid has increased walkability by concentrating development around the small number of main through-streets and their intersections.

24. Chicago’s grid system is very efficient and ensures that it is pretty much impossible to get lost.

25. For driving, grids are better. For walking, I strongly prefer chaotic, meandering streets. Those types of streets encourage wandering & exploring. They’re just more interesting & aesthetically pleasing than dull grids. So maybe my ideal would be having a handful of grid-type streets & outer ring roads, with the interior neighborhood streets being a bit chaotic.

26. I prefer the grid. If I want to get to the courthouse, I can drive north until I get to Main Street, then east until I get to the courthouse. If one of those roads is closed, I can just jog over one street and continue. If I’m in Boston and I want to get to the courthouse, my best chance is to get arrested and wait for the cops to take me there.

27. As someone who grew up in a a grid system I cannot handle when it isn’t a grid.

28. As a life long New Englander, I have never lived in a grid. I will say I dislike it when I travel to other parts of the country.