Cities with grid-based layouts

[Kyng]

Sometimes, you'll see cities that have all their streets laid out in a regular, orderly grid. This kind of city is rare in Europe (the only grid-based city I've visited is Barcelona), but they're more common in North America: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and others are famous for it.

However, today, I saw a link to a video called "Why cities with grids are terribly designed". And, I decided I should check it out:



To be honest, the title turned out to be clickbait, because the video doesn't conclude that grid-based cities are irredeemably bad . True, it does list some disadvantages of this style of city layout - but it does also note some advantages. So, let's start with the positives of a grid-based city layout:

• Simple. It's hard to get lost in a city like this: if you know where you are, and you know where you need to go, then you can easily find your way there.
  
• Easy to build. If you just need to throw down a load of houses, then this simple layout can be copied and pasted as far as you want .
  
• Economically efficient. This layout maximises the available space for building, because there aren't any awkwardly-shaped parcels of land that are difficult to build on.
  
• Conducive to development. With everything being clearly-demarcated, there aren't likely to be many land disputes.

As a result of these advantages, the grid was the preferred layout for cities built in the 19th and early 20th centuries (which explains why you'll find a lot of them in the USA: that's when it was taking in large numbers of immigrants from all over the world, and they needed to live somewhere ). But, as we moved into the 20th century, some disadvantages emerged:

• Bad for cars. These cities contain a lot of intersections - which slow drivers down, and put them at risk of accidents. Furthermore, they don't adequately differentiate between arterial roads and smaller residential streets: most roads in these cities are too narrow to be good at the former, but too wide to be good at the latter.
  
• Bad in hilly terrain. I said earlier that they're easy to build - but, terrain features (such as hills) mess them up. So, to build one, you need to flatten everything in its way.
  
• Risk of flooding. Grid-based cities usually have more paved surfaces; thus more asphalt and cement, making them less permeable.
  
• Too much heat. The perpendicular streets disrupt air flow, leading to heat getting trapped.
  
• Boring. Okay, this is subjective - but, it is simple and repetitive, and a lot of us find that boring .

But... I'm not sure how many of these are inherent problems with a grid-based design. The traffic issues are worst in grid-based cities that were laid out before cars were invented (such as New York), and a grid city built today would probably have a clearer distinction between arterial roads and residential streets (with some of the latter being completely pedestrianised). And the other four points sound like they apply mostly to a pure grid design with absolutely no deviations from this layout: if you allow a few deviations from the grid pattern, then I suspect you could solve most of these issues, while retaining most of the advantages that a grid system has.

So, are you a fan of this kind of city - and, if you wanted to build one, then what would be the best way to do it?