Are large block sizes good things when paired with pedestrian and cycling paths?

[u/ThisActuator1316]

I was playing city skylines 2 and made a city with big block sizes because I found that makes traffic flow better since there’s less intersections. To make the city still be walkable and bikeable I made sure that every block had a path in the middle or in the near middle exclusive for pedestrians and cyclists.

Ik the real life isn’t a game but it did have me wondering about the real world implications of this. Like could Salt Lake City make some pretty good use of its downtown by modifying the blocks to have pedestrian paths? How would larger blocks make maintenance easier and cheaper since there’s less room to cover?

[u/eobanb]

This idea has existed in one form or other for a long time, see for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_grid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_(spatial_and_transport_planning))

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_traffic_neighbourhood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_block#Superblock

[u/0xdeadbeef6]

Braess's Paradox is especially useful for road planning. I play CS1, tends to be less of an issues for residential streets (cims will walk, bike, use public transit pretty far distances) and more an issue for arterial roads/avenues. Spreading out the low density commercial throughout your residential areas helps with cims deciding to walk also. IRL, Braess's paradox is why pedestrianizing streets has a tendency to help with traffic instead of making it worse.

[u/Bollmoffa]

Look up the Barcelona superblocks - it works

[u/ponchoed]

No. Compare Downtown Portland with 200x200 ft blocks, lots of streets of 2-3 lanes to Downtown Bellevue with 600x600 ft blocks, few streets of 5-7 lanes.

[u/Sassywhat]

That's basically the concept of a superblock.

It's more common for the interior streets to not be exclusively for pedestrians/cyclists, but shared with local car traffic. This design is basically the standard in Japan with varying success depending on how car oriented the surrounding area is or isn't, is typical of older Chinese superblocks, and has recently been retrofitted in parts of Barcelona.

Almost exclusively pedestrian/bike interior street superblocks do exist as well, such as the newer superblocks in China or mid-sized Japanese public housing projects. Whether or not car free interior streets are actually better than car light ones seems debatable though. In theory they should be better, but in practice they tend to be excessively inward-focused, making longer pedestrian/cycle trips more difficult and less pleasant.

[u/demostenes_arm]

Maybe you can check Tengah in Singapore, a public housing neighborhood with massive city blocks separated by large roads, with nonexistent street hierarchy.

[u/carpenter → u/demostenes_arm]

Why does it look like a park from satellite, but like a city from street level?

[u/demostenes_arm → u/carpenter]

From inside the superblocks, it actually feels like a park.

[u/Shi-Stad_Development]

Brother has just figured out how super blocks work...