This discussion topic was posted in AskFunTrivia;
moved here as it doesn't belong in the Q and A section of FT.




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Surely, grids of various kinds are typical of all planned cities - whether in the Old or New World.

I for one am grateful so many stateside cities are laid down in straight lines and that streets have predictable names.

Life is so fraught with real problems and anxieties, it's good to know I won't be traumatised in a strange place trying to figure out my way across town. Common sense dictates the need to platt cities in straight lines with numbered streets one way, and alphabetical tree and bird names [ or whatever the city planner fancies] going across the numbered ones. This practice saves people many hours of frustration, to be sure.

I credit The Land Ordinance of 1785. When most of your land is subdivided in grids by statute, streets tend to follow.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, the lack of the standardization common in the Western states (i.e., anything west of the original colonies) was quite aggravating.

The simplest answer would have to be, 'Because they could'.

Downtown Sacramento is incredibly easy to navigate and only when you get into the suburban areas does it get dicey.

When we read 1410 J Street, we know exactly where that is.
It's on J Street and we know where A street is and Z street ends in terms of north south, and then, the number streets.
MOst of us know by heart which ones are one way too!

Grids work much better on flat surfaces, and we've got lots of that in the States.

The sources I've located suggest the idea of 'grid cities ' date all the way back to about 2600 BC and have never been confined to the Americas. Through the centuries, city planners have made straight lined cities for ease of navigation and to create more pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods. New roads built in a straight line are less costly to build and maintain. Studies also show that traffic fatalities are much less in gridded areas. This last is due to more frequent intersections which demand lower traffic speeds.

If you see a straight main road in Britain they're nearly all Roman. It was the obvious method and they ignored hills and other features and usually went straight through or over them. Once they left the British preferred to avoid using other people's land and build round boundaries, and anything else in the way as it was easier. As a result we now have the worst roads in any civilised country and far too late to do much to fix it as there'd be no room to rearrange anything. I couldn't get lost on Manhattan if I tried but even regular visitors would have a job navigating Central London or anywhere else around it. That's why our taxi drivers need to take exams and others don't, plus all the one way and blocked off streets. I drove them all for months in a van and they are diabolical.

Say what you may about the Mormons but Salt Lake City has a nice orderly layout where all streets are based on direction and distance from the temple. Really easy to find your away around as the street names and numbers will be 5400 South, 2000 East and such. Good system, really have to give them credit.

Sorry Australians, but Sydney, now that's a city where you can tell that it was laid out by criminals, just throw a street anywhere you feel like! Once you get used to it though, not so bad.

It makes life easy for postmen;)
It's a useful system for relatively new planned cities that are built in a river or coastal plain- anywhere flat enough. Cities built on hills usually have main streets that follow contour lines of those hills. The main streets here in Jerusalem were shepherd paths eons ago as the city was built over several hills.

I live in Sandusky,Ohio. Even though we are a relatively small city (pop.30,000), it is very hard for anyone new to the area to figure out how our streets run. Our layout was done by the Freemasons with their "square and compass" design shown here aerial view Sandusky . We have streets that actually "end" and then "begin" again 2 or 3 different times. Quite baffling, but I have been told it's very significant. Not that anyone cares, but my house is right at the circle to the top point.

Interesting and unusual! However, it's still consciously geometric. Obviously, I can see that if one's designing a street layout from scratch, anything like meandering English country lanes might raise questions about the planner's sanity.

I thought it was for easier pizza delivery!