But it's definitely correct that the modern non-grid is definitely not suitable to walking/biking, but that's more due to zoning and centralization of systems (e.g. schools) rather than grid vs. non-grid. It's not like a cul-de-sac for a car couldn't contain an off-shoot to a pedestrian/biking path that cuts a trip significantly for a non-car.
Postwar suburbs have more car traffic in total, but it's okay because it's not in front of your house. But once you go outside of the residential subdivisions, to the places where the traffic has been exiled, they're nightmares.
Grids were "pretty good" with horses and buggies, pretty good with cars, pretty good with eBikes, and will probably be pretty good with whatever the future holds, rather than being "perfect" for any one way of getting around.
If you are walking in a modern suburb, “You’re always going out of your way,” he says. It is not only people walking who have to take less direct routes. Buses are more effective when roads are in grids, allowing passengers to get anywhere with just one change.
There's no money to be made on "public" land and it lowers the value of the land immediately adjacent to it.
Nobody wants to have their yard directly on the path, where people walk all the time, including with their dogs and for every so many dogs that get walked there and where the owner picks up after them, there will be one that doesn't. Even in the best neighbourhood you'll have teenagers being loud in those places at night etc.
Just like everyone wants to live in close walking range to the park/playground so that the kids can easily get there by themselves i.e. that public land does increase in attractiveness to families but nobody really wants to live right next to it. Public walking and biking paths increase attractiveness to families again, because the kids don't have to bike on the road, they're on a safe path. But again, nobody really wants to live right next to it.
And he's also correct in that developers won't like that and every square foot of path adds up over an entire project. However it doesn't mean that it isn't overall a good thing for many reasons. It's a give and take like many things in life but it does mean that it's a solvable problem.
What exactly is "parkland"? I know some examples that I wouldn't mind being across from or backing onto with enough thick brush/tree border and others I would definitely avoid at much cost. When you say premium, is all of it premium? Asking because of course even in a premium only development someone will live next to public places. I definitely know how I would choose which place to buy if I could have any of them.
I only have anecdata but I've lived in a few places in my life so far and I can tell you that one place for example we specifically didn't buy because it was right across from an open field park with playground, baseball field and a skate park even though it was otherwise very nice. We are still close to it but we don't hear or see it except when there's a festival and live music and such. Of course someone does live there even today and there's other much larger and more luxurious houses than I could afford right next to another playground close to me. But who knows, if I hadn't found that other place I may have opted to live with the park because it was still better than what I was trying to get away from.
Grids are made for cars. And buses, trucks (garbage trucks too), semis. They are ok at moving vehicles from houses to the highway, but you can walk them too.
Non-grids are for people and (few) cars. They are intentionally designed to discourage non-residents from driving through them. They optimize for selling the maximum amount of land and delivering the minimum conveniently drivable surface so other people don't drive near your house but you can go drive through theirs.
Grids are bad for cars because four way stops are really inefficient at processing them. You'll notice in American suburban planning that there are as few four-way stops as possible inside a subdivision.
Non-grids extend the distance of a lot of trips and are thus hostile to slower non-motorized users. Driving an extra 500m is not a big deal for a car but is an additional several minutes for slower users. And non-grids in the US funnel onto very big roads with few crosswalks, so that's even more diversion distance; and then on top of that it can easily take a few minutes to even get a walk/cycle signal at an intersection.
In contrast it's very easy to make a grid less hospitable to cars but also still allow pedestrians and cyclists to take the shortest path; just lay bollards diagonally across an four-way intersection that are too narrow for vehicles but large enough for bikes and people.
I don't believe this is true. In fact iirc it has been proven that if you chose any random two points in a non-grid set up (eg, something like London) then the distance by road you have to travel is on average less than it would be in a grid.
This makes intutive sense to me - a grid always means you must travel the entire length of the "opposite and the adjacent" but in a non-grid you can typically find a route that's a bit closer to the hypotenuse and better optimised. So non-grids are particularly better for non-car users as they reduce distance travelled.
As well as that - travel is not typically between entirely random points on a map. In a non-grid roads tend to be optimised after their usage and not historically "planned" so you'll have lots of roads that directly go between areas of major popularity fairly directly.
I find grids to be an inhuman layer forced over a city. They make journeys take longer, they even make car journeys worse because of the endless intersections. The main advantage they used to have (easier navigation when you are a newbie in a city) seems to be made redundant by GPS these days.
London is not on one fixed grid, but there are certainly grid-like things in many areas, for the simple reasons that
* above 4 ways at an intersection tends to be really poor throughput
* people like right or almost right angles for building construction, and that tends to be reflected in lot lines; acute angles are quite bad
This is a non-issue. Where I'm from, grid neighbourhoods are the norm and stop signs are not a thing. First, the grid spreads out traffic inside it. Then, you're supposed to drive at around 35 km/h. Last, narrower/streets with more traffic tend to be one way. Most of the driving takes place at arteries, still part of the grid. Those have semaphores.
Also, grids add A TON of public street parking. Get off your arterial road close to your destination and into the neighbourhood and look for parking. That also means there's street and sidewalk space for bus stops and space for laying out utilities (electric, water and sewers).
What I'm trying to say is that grids are meant for cars among all the other things. The thing about non-grids is they are upscale: less public surface means bigger lots and worse transportation means leans non-residents around.
America is also a country in which road engineers will spend hundreds of millions of dollars eliminating mere seconds at a single intersection. In that context, a four way stop is "inefficient" or dangerous and as many internal intersections as possible in non-grids are just three way T's.
> streets are certainly wide enough for street-parking but a lot of them don't allow it for reasons.
If I had to guess, because they're hostile to non-residents and they are optimizing for residential property values.
Grids with free parking are welcoming to non-residents and optimizing for business revenue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan#Ancient_grid_plans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Chinese_urban_planning