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Originally Posted by Crawford
Grids have almost nothing to with potential walkability or transit orientation, so I don't even get the point. Generally the best urban environments aren't on grids.
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This is what started the argument about size of street grids. My argument is that I disagree about lumping Houston and Atlanta together while making out LA as being so different from LA. Atlanta's downtown grid transitions into a very suburban street network much faster and becomes cul-de-sac dominated across a much larger part of the metro area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease
In comparing the ten or so sprawling post-war boom towns of the American sunbelt, Los Angeles is far and away the most urban of the group by simple virtue of the fact that it was already geographically larger and more populous than any of its sunbelt peer cities by WWII. In fact compared to Dallas or Houston or Atlanta at that time, it was an order of magnitude larger.
Within the 500 square mile City of Los Angeles, the cul-de-sac as a typology is non-existent. The city is characterized by a vast and unrelenting grid divided by four lane arterials, or in rare cases six lanes, dozens of which are lined with commercial and residential buildings that meet the sidewalk. Many of these commercial strips are over 10 miles long.
That most people drive is well known, but even those who live in single family homes are, almost without exception, never more then a 5-7 minutes walk from a commercial arterial with neighborhood shops. This is the reason L.A. will have more success than any other sunbelt city in reorganizing itself around rail transit. It's built from and urban character have far more in common with Queens, N.Y. then Houston or Atlanta.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Trae
I don't know about that. Houston (and Dallas) are built in large grids just like LA. Houston, in particular, is developing in an LA type way, especially points west and southwest. Atlanta is not built in a grid at all and instead has winding country roads.
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Houston's street network has much more of a street grid element to it than Atlanta which I think will allow it to reorganize around transit more if it wants to. Obviously it will need more density, but you are seeing West Houston densify quite a bit. Keep in mind LA used to be less dense than it is now and was about the same density as Houston back in 1950/1960. So issues related to density, including how much retail is within walking distance, can be overcome.
From the POV of how a street grid impacts urbanization/densification, there's two main points, the fact that streets and homes are well connected to each other at a local level, and that the arterial grid on which buses and light rail can travel, where you want them to be relatively straight and sufficiently closely spaced.
Atlanta is much worse than Houston on both points. Some European cities don't have very good arterial grids in their historic (Medieval) cores, and they would be a pain to serve by surface transit on a large scale. Fortunately these areas are typically pretty small, and often have subways that don't have to follow streets, so it's doesn't turn out to be a problem.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
No, they're nothing alike, and I have no idea what you're even arguing here.
Every street grid on earth has dead ends somewhere, and I'm specifically referring to an area of inner Houston with winding streets, cul de sacs, and random streets starting and stopping with dead ends, none of which are present in Long Island City.
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If you're talking about some place like this, it's pretty similar to Long Island City.
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Hou...0d02def365053b
The dead ends aren't there because they intentionally wanted the streets to be disconnected, they're there because there's a railroad. Same as Long Island City although the railway lands in Long Island City are much larger and would be much more expensive to build street crossings through/over. Maybe Bayside, Queens is a better comparison
If you're talking about places like this as having winding streets
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Hou...0d02def365053b
That's really semantics. For all intents and purposes it functions more like a standard street grid than anything else. Gentle curves like that don't really make a difference for anything.
You do have stuff like this in parts of Houston
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Hou...0d02def365053b
I'd consider those super blocks. It's not ideal, but in that area, they aren't too dominant. New York has its housing projects which are on super blocks too, but fortunately they don't make up the majority of the city so it can still work. Also parts of the LA area are similar functionally, including that area of Garden Grove.
This block in SW Houston functions a bit like a smaller super block
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Hou...0d02def365053b
There's a couple cul-de-sacs and a crescent/loop, but the dominant form of the surrounding blocks is still a street grid so it's not really a big deal.
This area is more of a pseudo-grid
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Hou...0d02def365053b
The internal connectivity is still pretty good, it's still much better than suburban Atlanta. But I generally did not count these pseudo grid areas as "street grid neighbourhoods".
Houston just needs to connect a few gaps, build some crossings (at least for pedestrians) across those drainage ditches and railroads and it should be good.
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Google maps are your friend, Trae.
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