
Visualizing the Hidden ‘Logic’ of Cities - DanBC
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/07/see-your-citys-street-structure-with-these-tools/566138/
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lordnacho
This is maybe the main thing I noticed as a European visiting the US. It also
made me realise why I thought the early versions of SimCity were somehow not
entirely satisfying.

You'll come across this in movies now and again, someone will use "blocks" as
a measure of distance within the city, but if you've grown up in Europe it
makes no sense at all. The space between streets here varies a lot, it's not
just a grid where you can say "up three, turn left, along four".

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ur-whale
Conversely, navigating a European city is a very confusing experience (even
for a European), whereas driving around from point A to point B in e.g. L.A.
is a no-brainer.

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nasredin
>whereas driving around from point A to point B in e.g. L.A. is a no-brainer.

... in theory.

Now getting around Manhattan is truly a no brainer!

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bryanrasmussen
Try Salt Lake City, Utah. [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/plat-of-
zion/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/plat-of-zion/)

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dqpb
This is interesting, but it should not be called the "Logic" of cities. Maybe
"Orientation" of cities.

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the_duke
Agreed, I was hoping of a visualization of travel flow, infrastructure
(logistics, grid, plumbing, ...), evolution of districts or something in that
vain.

Logic is the wrong term here.

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idoco
I really loved the minimal Mapbox implementation of the concept! (by Vladimir
Agafonkin)

[https://jsfiddle.net/Mourner/zbdu3fkg/](https://jsfiddle.net/Mourner/zbdu3fkg/)

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hyperion2010
While this is a great visualization, I think that it is missing the traffic
volume, which would paint a much more accurate picture of how cities actually
work. I say this looking at San Diego where if you want to know how the city
is designed and how traffic actually flows, there should be 3 big lines
running from south south east to north north west (or similar) because those
are the 3 major freeways. Instead you have a big north south signal which is
not actually reflective of how any traffic flows.

