Architect and urban & computational designer Abhinav Bhardwaj made this great set of slides comparing urban design in the US and Europe, peppered with pithy observations like:
- European space is shaped on purpose: American open space is what’s left over.
- Small blocks make more corners, more routes, more street life.
- A fine grid offers hundreds of routes; the tree offers one way out.
Tons of cities have grids, just maybe small ones. A theme in many places is to have an old downtown that has organic streets and a new downtown with a square grid, and then everything else is just a mess of straight and organic shapes.
Nearly all American cities are grids, so I don’t know what was trying to be said unless they’re just talking about suburban subdivisions