Wut. The headline here is totally wrong. Wide streets are bad, actually. Grids are great – and that seems to be what the article is actually about. Grids of narrow streets that are close together. Manhattan’s grid actually sucks because while the east west streets, don’t have very much space between them, the north south streets are way too far apart. The grid should make squares, not rectangles.
Interesting and thought-provoking article. It brought to mind the early planning of city builder Brigham Young in the American West. When he and the first pioneers laid out Salt Lake City, Utah in the late 1840s, they followed the Plat of Zion model established by Joseph Smith, designing streets that were 132 feet wide—broad enough for a team of oxen and a wagon to turn completely around without unhitching. This remarkable foresight, both practical and visionary, allowed for future growth, transport, and civic design well beyond the settlers’ immediate needs.
That same kind of long-range thinking—reserving space for movement, connection, and future innovation—is precisely what developing cities need today. Infrastructure planned with that balance of utility and imagination becomes a legacy, not a limitation.
Roads for what is the important bit here. Wide enough roads that put the private car absolutely dead last in priority, yes. But we should be very wary of following a big, wide road model that doesn’t really work for cities like Houston or Los Angeles … and once built is very hard to work back from.
Wider roads for walking, cycling, and transit, sure, have at it!
Wut. The headline here is totally wrong. Wide streets are bad, actually. Grids are great – and that seems to be what the article is actually about. Grids of narrow streets that are close together. Manhattan’s grid actually sucks because while the east west streets, don’t have very much space between them, the north south streets are way too far apart. The grid should make squares, not rectangles.
Interesting and thought-provoking article. It brought to mind the early planning of city builder Brigham Young in the American West. When he and the first pioneers laid out Salt Lake City, Utah in the late 1840s, they followed the Plat of Zion model established by Joseph Smith, designing streets that were 132 feet wide—broad enough for a team of oxen and a wagon to turn completely around without unhitching. This remarkable foresight, both practical and visionary, allowed for future growth, transport, and civic design well beyond the settlers’ immediate needs.
That same kind of long-range thinking—reserving space for movement, connection, and future innovation—is precisely what developing cities need today. Infrastructure planned with that balance of utility and imagination becomes a legacy, not a limitation.
Roads for what is the important bit here. Wide enough roads that put the private car absolutely dead last in priority, yes. But we should be very wary of following a big, wide road model that doesn’t really work for cities like Houston or Los Angeles … and once built is very hard to work back from.
Wider roads for walking, cycling, and transit, sure, have at it!
The lift is the king. 2x1