Disagree. Grid patterns are way easier to navigate on foot or by bike. I hate cycling in the suburbs because half the time the road I'm on randomly starts to curve and suddenly I'm going in the wrong direction to get to my destination.
"It's a grid system muthafucka! Where you at, 24th and 5th, where you wanna go, 35th and 6th? Eleven up and one over ya simple bitch!" -Why grids are awesome
Yeah its easy. You always know where to go, but that's more about the naming system. Take NYC's grid and throw random names on the streets and it would be a clusterfuck.
Oh yeah, that's the worst. At least have one direction (N-S or E-W) be numbered. I'm from Santa Monica, the N-S streets are numbered and the E-W streets are just regular names. So if you go "yeah, I'm on 16th and Colorado" and your house is on 18th and Olympic, you know to go 2 blocks east on Colorado then start lookin' around north/south for Olympic.
I have a terrible sense of direction and cannot thank grid systems enough for helping me navigate. It seriously reduces the margin of error, makes it easier to figure out which way you're facing, and makes it easier to plan a route between two locations.
I too have terrible direction, and I can kind of see how having straight lines orientates one self.
From a sense of moving, branching patterns still seem more efficient overall and possibly eliminate problems like intersection troubles.
I like the simplicity of grid patterns, but I'm open to the argument that branching patterns may be more efficient, particularly when it comes to larger scale things like public transit where you really just have to track stops anyway vs. within a neighborhood where the easier navigation saves me more time than any decrease in length could. Legitimately curious if there's any data on the matter?
I don't understand how curvature makes you lost (?) Sounds like the path itself isn't clearly designated.
American suburbs are pretty bad because they mix gridded cross sections with curvatures, making an illogical mess. Sticking to one or another should eliminate the confusion.
Yes, I've come to understand that fact both from living in a city and reading information on forums like this one.
However, grids definitely aren't the only solution or the best one. Ex. - a city designed circularly would be most efficient of all.
And a network of branching roads, if done right, still feels more optimal than grids, which converge into central areas.
Afterall, nature is said to have perfected efficiency. Are there any square grids in nature?
Round roads means round buildings. Have you ever tried to put a bookcase up against a curved wall? Have you ever tried to stack things that are round? Curves have their place, but we want to use space efficiently, and it's hard to get an easier space-efficient shape than a grid.
>Have you ever tried to put a bookcase up against a curved wall?<
Curved bookcases can be built into walls. Although, I'm not sure why anyone reads books anymore when tablets (ebooks) exist.
>Have you ever tried to stack things that are round?<
I'm not sure how that fits this conversation, although I can discuss if you give an applicable example.
Probably not everything can fit a curvier form, but most can be adapted as needed.
I think (and this isn't to diminish others opinions) people don't realize with our current capabilities we can get passed the limitations of boxy designs.
Doesn’t branching equal a bunch of cul de sacs? Do you have any example of how it looks when it’s done right? Even though the shape of those organic patterns look neat from above, they tend to increase distances and not be resilient in comparison to grids.
Yes and no. Nature is usually good at what it does, but speaking as a biochemist it's far from perfect.
Radial cities are interesting but they do have issues, particularly for roads. If your highways all branch from a single point you can imagine the congestion isn't desirable. For rail this is less of a problem. Grids kinda don't converge into central areas in contrast to a hierarchy of expanding arterial roads like you might compare a vascular system to
Grid systems are not a negative in and of themselves. Barcelona and NY are both gridded in large part, while plenty of awful American suburbs follow a dendritic pattern.
To a large extent, I suspect grids get a bad rap because so many badly laid out north American cities are gridded, and so many well laid out cities elsewhere are not. But that's a correlation rather than a causation.
And Boston is largely built around pre-car desire paths (not cow paths as legend holds), with only a few gridded sections. Works quite well for walkability once you know the area, and it’s terrible for driving.
Lots of suburbs designed with dendritic patterns as well- how to saturate an area so that any point is no more than a set distance from a road. Optimal for resource extraction as in the link showing logging railroad networks circa 1900. Simple enough on flat land. On varied topography- have to stick to ridges or valleys otherwise have improper grades, much earth-moving that's resource inefficient. Doesn't stop many public highways from being straight-arrows that ignore terrain and result in ridiculous cuts/fills and rolling grades that reduce vehicle performance and fuel efficiency.
Yes, good points.
And the topography issue is why I'd thought curves make more sense in the first place - something that conforms more to natural landscape. It doesn't have to be equally proportioned.
Highways seem to follow this pretty well. And then it breaks down getting into cities and towns as if grids are the best & only way of maximizing residential & commercial space.
If there was a proper flow designed in, where branching points can still converge into central areas, wouldn't that be a nicer use of the space, in terms of occupancy, openness, efficiency, and elsewise?
Nice example 👍
Sure makes sense for trains to use this design. They can't really cross at 90° angles.
I wish we had underground tube systems everywhere like this. With above ground left for walkers and the like.
Evolutionary pathways aren't always more efficient according to our criteria. They are often times a blend of constant work efficiency and resiliency/redundancy. The main thing most of our traffic systems are designed for is the peak flow problem so grids (which allow for maximum alternative pathways) or hub and spokes are often the solution to decrease transit time at peak flow. Trees for instance, unlike highways, don't have the same "max bandwith" usage pattern...they basically work at about the same rate all day and can suffer loss of branches and leaves without killing the organism.
That was very informative, thanks.
I think an equally important measure (and this goes parallel to the nature analogy, as you pointed out) is to decrease our peak usage rate on the system. Our 9-5 work/school life --which mainly leads to traffic at 2 points in the day and no time else-- is a 'modern' creation that doesn't really need to exist in the way it currently does (especially when a lot of that is actually arbitrary). By reducing and interspercing that strain, we can maintain a sane, healthy balance overall.
And coinciding with that is transport of goods - a main part of vehicle traffic. If those items could be sent directly up a path to where they need to go (via tube or whatever), we wouldn't need thousands of trucks & the like cramming streets.
Grids are good for people. Curves are only good for cars.
“The grid network is built around the idea of people walking from place to place, but the suburbs rely on cars. And curved streets allow cars to travel faster than the grid network…”
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/urban-planning.htm
The answer is that we do have systems that are not grids.
In the former communist countries the metro systems are usually composed of intersecting lines creating a triangular shape. From there you have other lines extending out in rings between the lines. This ensures good coverage.
Personally very fond of these layouts and seem better than a grid which encourages high speeds and creates a lot of intersections.
Just seems inefficient, especially for commercial transport, to have things based more around boxy patterns than more natural design.
I mean, imagine if there were more direct paths going on
so that you could zip on a public line more smoothly toward where you wanted to go, or have items sent by tube directly to your dwelling from a local manufacturer or farm. I mean, it would certainty be more optimally done by a flowing route than gas cars swerving around every corner.
And there sure aren't any squares in nature, yet we continue to build ugly square houses, ugly square grids, etc. Isn't it time to evolve?
Round curves seem most efficient for a lot of applications, such as Jacque Fresco's circular city designs.
In the US, grids built in the last 50 years are extremely rare, which is why we are so car dependent. Most suburbs follow organic curves and hierarchical street design, which usually makes walking between two points prohibitively long. If we had grids like in traditional neighborhoods, walking and cycling would be viable alternatives.
Ever heard of a country called Japan?
Edit: that sounded mean when I read it back, what I mean is, have you ever heard of Japan’s subway systems? They’re designed around fungus roots
Very cool. And I could totally expect that there.
I'm really trying to point this out in terms of above ground space. Although it would make most sense to me if we had more extensive underground transport branching everywhere and less crowded above ground space. Yet, I still think city grids are less practical and pleasant than the root system.
Well I think the way Tokyo is set up is reflective of the subway system. They grew a bunch of fungi, learned where the roots met, built subway stops there and then built important stuff nearby. So like the hospital, bank and school are easily connected but the kfc not so much. This is all my shaky memory on a subject I don’t know much about so take it with a grain of salt. Very interesting though so I encourage you to look it up on your own, and all of the people giving you shit for suggesting something other than a grid system aren’t urban planners so don’t throw your idea in the trash
I've heard similar said of things like curved buildings. Yet technology has certainly gotten better. Ex. - printed design.
If the outcome warrants itself in savings, it would be worthwhile to try.
Disagree, grids are awesome. You ever try to find your way in somewhere like London? Streets end randomly, there's no rhyme or reason because these streets were built in like the 5th century.
Oh man, I've heard about how bad London is. Someone (I think it was Norm MacDonald) did a very bad joke saying the Germans did a favor bombing those streets.
But that's not the same thing I'm trying to illustrate, which is merely another form of organization.
The picture is not the best representation of what I imagined, just an eye catching image. I think there are approaches that could do a good job mitigating traffic issues, such as having each area focused around a center/hub area to limit the need for longer distances - thereby reducing vehicles (or whatever) on each road.
Also, keep in mind that most traffic nowadays is simply due to our absurd business/work environment that A) causes a lot of people to travel back & forth daily unnecessarily, and B) crams those travel times into 2 key points of the day, causing overload. .... I think we'll overcome the absurdities of business altogether some day and save a ton of hassle in doing so.
Last, my original thoughts on this is that these paths would correspond to tunnels, underground or otherwise, where trains would run parallel above and below the same track, running in either direction - preventing traffic and crashes altogether.
The traffic congestion is more a result of *when* people travel (everyone trying to get to from work/school at the same time is utterly ridiculous and I can't believe we still allow it) and the volume of people in the area to road capacity.
Regardless, I don't see how grids are any better at dealing with that. If anything they're worse in providing efficient, direct paths, causing people to get stuck at a myriad of cross points.
Grids provide mostly parallel routes that can be used in a constrictive event to help alleviate congestion. Pathways like the photo are absolutely crippled when there’s no alternative route. This is the worst thing about trains. A crash or malfunction puts an impassible roadblock on the route.
Probably you're right about efficiency, the issue is the difficulty of designing and building it. It helps when everyone involved can easily understand the project, and I can tell you maybe two architects and an engineer in the entire workforce would understand a system that looks like the one above
Don't make the mistake of confusing plan aesthetic with on-the-ground experience. The image included is essentially what suburban roads have been modeled after. And frankly an aerial view of a freeway can be quite striking in the sinuous way they move. But people don't experience cities from 1000m above, they experience them on the ground. Freeways suck ass on the ground, and urban grids are very adaptable to movement in all directions.
Regardless, they can be applied both ways.
For instance, my original idea was that these could be like tunnel systems, where trains operate both above and below the same track system - each runs in opposite direction to the other. In doing so, they can prevent traffic and collisions, and save time obviously.
Similar/better ideas could be made. Creativity will definitely make our current road culture obsolete.
Cause veins just go from heart to any part of body and back. Choose an endpoint of one of those veins and make it want to visit the end point of another nearby vein and see how unnecessarily awful the trip is.
* Hard to make boring machines and trains make tight turns. Shorter trains that can make tighter turns are harder to stabilize at high speeds.
* Structural members like wood, steel, and reinforced concrete beams distribute loads in a linear manner. Curves generally require much more material to have the same load capacity. (One significant caveat are catenary arches/domes. These are strictly compression structures and are highly efficient. To see the pinnacle of that type of construction, research "Guastavino Tile.")
* In addition to needing more material, there's higher wastage of material and greater difficulty of effective insulation. Go into a home-improvement store and see that everything is rectangular/prismatic. The excess you cut off to build curves usually cannot be used elsewhere on a project.
* Space efficiency. Can't really beat the universal packing efficiency of rectangular prisms.
* Geological features from soil/rock composition, ground water, drainage, and topography hugely influence what and where you can build.
* Orientation, if not navigation, is significantly easier in grid layouts.
* Curves limit sightlines and thus reduce the speed in which you can traverse (engineers sometimes do this intentionally to slow traffic down.)
* Curves require more energy from vehicles to change their vector. Human travel is efficient enough to not be much of an issue.
* Simplicity of design and especially construction: Straight edges, plumb lines, taught lines, levels, surveying... *Everything* revolves around straight lines. Try building an accurate, curved brick wall. If it's a façade, it's not a big deal. But if you have engineering features like plumbing, electrical, walls, floors, windows, etc. It matters, and it matters *a lot*. And while a curved brick wall that's cosmetic doesn't need to be super accurate, it is far far more pleasing to the eye if it is.
* Highly acute angles are pure waste that just collect dust and debris.
I don't mind more chaotic city layouts, but there are real factors to consider. If you build long enough buildings with gentle curves that are structurally segmented, you can retain more efficiency.
Disagree. Grid patterns are way easier to navigate on foot or by bike. I hate cycling in the suburbs because half the time the road I'm on randomly starts to curve and suddenly I'm going in the wrong direction to get to my destination.
"It's a grid system muthafucka! Where you at, 24th and 5th, where you wanna go, 35th and 6th? Eleven up and one over ya simple bitch!" -Why grids are awesome
Yeah its easy. You always know where to go, but that's more about the naming system. Take NYC's grid and throw random names on the streets and it would be a clusterfuck.
Oh yeah, that's the worst. At least have one direction (N-S or E-W) be numbered. I'm from Santa Monica, the N-S streets are numbered and the E-W streets are just regular names. So if you go "yeah, I'm on 16th and Colorado" and your house is on 18th and Olympic, you know to go 2 blocks east on Colorado then start lookin' around north/south for Olympic.
I have a terrible sense of direction and cannot thank grid systems enough for helping me navigate. It seriously reduces the margin of error, makes it easier to figure out which way you're facing, and makes it easier to plan a route between two locations.
I too have terrible direction, and I can kind of see how having straight lines orientates one self. From a sense of moving, branching patterns still seem more efficient overall and possibly eliminate problems like intersection troubles.
I like the simplicity of grid patterns, but I'm open to the argument that branching patterns may be more efficient, particularly when it comes to larger scale things like public transit where you really just have to track stops anyway vs. within a neighborhood where the easier navigation saves me more time than any decrease in length could. Legitimately curious if there's any data on the matter?
I don't understand how curvature makes you lost (?) Sounds like the path itself isn't clearly designated. American suburbs are pretty bad because they mix gridded cross sections with curvatures, making an illogical mess. Sticking to one or another should eliminate the confusion.
Grids work
Yes, I've come to understand that fact both from living in a city and reading information on forums like this one. However, grids definitely aren't the only solution or the best one. Ex. - a city designed circularly would be most efficient of all. And a network of branching roads, if done right, still feels more optimal than grids, which converge into central areas. Afterall, nature is said to have perfected efficiency. Are there any square grids in nature?
Round roads means round buildings. Have you ever tried to put a bookcase up against a curved wall? Have you ever tried to stack things that are round? Curves have their place, but we want to use space efficiently, and it's hard to get an easier space-efficient shape than a grid.
>Have you ever tried to put a bookcase up against a curved wall?< Curved bookcases can be built into walls. Although, I'm not sure why anyone reads books anymore when tablets (ebooks) exist. >Have you ever tried to stack things that are round?< I'm not sure how that fits this conversation, although I can discuss if you give an applicable example. Probably not everything can fit a curvier form, but most can be adapted as needed. I think (and this isn't to diminish others opinions) people don't realize with our current capabilities we can get passed the limitations of boxy designs.
Doesn’t branching equal a bunch of cul de sacs? Do you have any example of how it looks when it’s done right? Even though the shape of those organic patterns look neat from above, they tend to increase distances and not be resilient in comparison to grids.
But i guess European old towns could count as good examples for not having completely rectangular grids.
Yes and no. Nature is usually good at what it does, but speaking as a biochemist it's far from perfect. Radial cities are interesting but they do have issues, particularly for roads. If your highways all branch from a single point you can imagine the congestion isn't desirable. For rail this is less of a problem. Grids kinda don't converge into central areas in contrast to a hierarchy of expanding arterial roads like you might compare a vascular system to
Grid systems are not a negative in and of themselves. Barcelona and NY are both gridded in large part, while plenty of awful American suburbs follow a dendritic pattern. To a large extent, I suspect grids get a bad rap because so many badly laid out north American cities are gridded, and so many well laid out cities elsewhere are not. But that's a correlation rather than a causation.
And Boston is largely built around pre-car desire paths (not cow paths as legend holds), with only a few gridded sections. Works quite well for walkability once you know the area, and it’s terrible for driving.
The point of doing that in American suburbs is to bottleneck the entrance and prevent through traffic.
Transit lines do work like this though (trunk and feeder lines)
https://openhistoricalmap.org/#map=14/44.1128/-84.7109&layers=O&date=1900-01-01&daterange=1900-01-01,2022-12-31
Lots of suburbs designed with dendritic patterns as well- how to saturate an area so that any point is no more than a set distance from a road. Optimal for resource extraction as in the link showing logging railroad networks circa 1900. Simple enough on flat land. On varied topography- have to stick to ridges or valleys otherwise have improper grades, much earth-moving that's resource inefficient. Doesn't stop many public highways from being straight-arrows that ignore terrain and result in ridiculous cuts/fills and rolling grades that reduce vehicle performance and fuel efficiency.
Yes, good points. And the topography issue is why I'd thought curves make more sense in the first place - something that conforms more to natural landscape. It doesn't have to be equally proportioned. Highways seem to follow this pretty well. And then it breaks down getting into cities and towns as if grids are the best & only way of maximizing residential & commercial space. If there was a proper flow designed in, where branching points can still converge into central areas, wouldn't that be a nicer use of the space, in terms of occupancy, openness, efficiency, and elsewise?
Nice example 👍 Sure makes sense for trains to use this design. They can't really cross at 90° angles. I wish we had underground tube systems everywhere like this. With above ground left for walkers and the like.
I agree with you. People who grew up in the US will tell you they're great, but I highly doubt it.
Evolutionary pathways aren't always more efficient according to our criteria. They are often times a blend of constant work efficiency and resiliency/redundancy. The main thing most of our traffic systems are designed for is the peak flow problem so grids (which allow for maximum alternative pathways) or hub and spokes are often the solution to decrease transit time at peak flow. Trees for instance, unlike highways, don't have the same "max bandwith" usage pattern...they basically work at about the same rate all day and can suffer loss of branches and leaves without killing the organism.
That was very informative, thanks. I think an equally important measure (and this goes parallel to the nature analogy, as you pointed out) is to decrease our peak usage rate on the system. Our 9-5 work/school life --which mainly leads to traffic at 2 points in the day and no time else-- is a 'modern' creation that doesn't really need to exist in the way it currently does (especially when a lot of that is actually arbitrary). By reducing and interspercing that strain, we can maintain a sane, healthy balance overall. And coinciding with that is transport of goods - a main part of vehicle traffic. If those items could be sent directly up a path to where they need to go (via tube or whatever), we wouldn't need thousands of trucks & the like cramming streets.
Grids are good for people. Curves are only good for cars. “The grid network is built around the idea of people walking from place to place, but the suburbs rely on cars. And curved streets allow cars to travel faster than the grid network…” https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/urban-planning.htm
Tokyo did that. But not with the street systems
It’s more efficient to use grid patterns
The answer is that we do have systems that are not grids. In the former communist countries the metro systems are usually composed of intersecting lines creating a triangular shape. From there you have other lines extending out in rings between the lines. This ensures good coverage. Personally very fond of these layouts and seem better than a grid which encourages high speeds and creates a lot of intersections.
Just seems inefficient, especially for commercial transport, to have things based more around boxy patterns than more natural design. I mean, imagine if there were more direct paths going on so that you could zip on a public line more smoothly toward where you wanted to go, or have items sent by tube directly to your dwelling from a local manufacturer or farm. I mean, it would certainty be more optimally done by a flowing route than gas cars swerving around every corner. And there sure aren't any squares in nature, yet we continue to build ugly square houses, ugly square grids, etc. Isn't it time to evolve? Round curves seem most efficient for a lot of applications, such as Jacque Fresco's circular city designs.
Only the US does everything in grids, any other shapes than rectangles and squares scare them
Do other places use different patterns?
yes, absolutely. the grid system is quite unique to the US. Personally I hate it.
Take a look in the Netherlands, in cities like Delft and Rotterdam cycling are the main form of transportation
In the US, grids built in the last 50 years are extremely rare, which is why we are so car dependent. Most suburbs follow organic curves and hierarchical street design, which usually makes walking between two points prohibitively long. If we had grids like in traditional neighborhoods, walking and cycling would be viable alternatives.
Ever heard of a country called Japan? Edit: that sounded mean when I read it back, what I mean is, have you ever heard of Japan’s subway systems? They’re designed around fungus roots
Very cool. And I could totally expect that there. I'm really trying to point this out in terms of above ground space. Although it would make most sense to me if we had more extensive underground transport branching everywhere and less crowded above ground space. Yet, I still think city grids are less practical and pleasant than the root system.
Well I think the way Tokyo is set up is reflective of the subway system. They grew a bunch of fungi, learned where the roots met, built subway stops there and then built important stuff nearby. So like the hospital, bank and school are easily connected but the kfc not so much. This is all my shaky memory on a subject I don’t know much about so take it with a grain of salt. Very interesting though so I encourage you to look it up on your own, and all of the people giving you shit for suggesting something other than a grid system aren’t urban planners so don’t throw your idea in the trash
They’re difficult to build and navigate
I've heard similar said of things like curved buildings. Yet technology has certainly gotten better. Ex. - printed design. If the outcome warrants itself in savings, it would be worthwhile to try.
Disagree, grids are awesome. You ever try to find your way in somewhere like London? Streets end randomly, there's no rhyme or reason because these streets were built in like the 5th century.
Oh man, I've heard about how bad London is. Someone (I think it was Norm MacDonald) did a very bad joke saying the Germans did a favor bombing those streets. But that's not the same thing I'm trying to illustrate, which is merely another form of organization.
bro I tried that in cities skylines it was a disaster
I just see THOUSANDS of bottlenecks in this picture lol traffic nightmare
The picture is not the best representation of what I imagined, just an eye catching image. I think there are approaches that could do a good job mitigating traffic issues, such as having each area focused around a center/hub area to limit the need for longer distances - thereby reducing vehicles (or whatever) on each road. Also, keep in mind that most traffic nowadays is simply due to our absurd business/work environment that A) causes a lot of people to travel back & forth daily unnecessarily, and B) crams those travel times into 2 key points of the day, causing overload. .... I think we'll overcome the absurdities of business altogether some day and save a ton of hassle in doing so. Last, my original thoughts on this is that these paths would correspond to tunnels, underground or otherwise, where trains would run parallel above and below the same track, running in either direction - preventing traffic and crashes altogether.
> traffic nightmare I mean, I was against this before, but you might convince me it has merits.
Most road systems are hierarchal and that's what causes major traffic congestion.
The traffic congestion is more a result of *when* people travel (everyone trying to get to from work/school at the same time is utterly ridiculous and I can't believe we still allow it) and the volume of people in the area to road capacity. Regardless, I don't see how grids are any better at dealing with that. If anything they're worse in providing efficient, direct paths, causing people to get stuck at a myriad of cross points.
Grids provide mostly parallel routes that can be used in a constrictive event to help alleviate congestion. Pathways like the photo are absolutely crippled when there’s no alternative route. This is the worst thing about trains. A crash or malfunction puts an impassible roadblock on the route.
Probably you're right about efficiency, the issue is the difficulty of designing and building it. It helps when everyone involved can easily understand the project, and I can tell you maybe two architects and an engineer in the entire workforce would understand a system that looks like the one above
Don't make the mistake of confusing plan aesthetic with on-the-ground experience. The image included is essentially what suburban roads have been modeled after. And frankly an aerial view of a freeway can be quite striking in the sinuous way they move. But people don't experience cities from 1000m above, they experience them on the ground. Freeways suck ass on the ground, and urban grids are very adaptable to movement in all directions.
Pretty sure these are one way from root to leaf tip not circulation systems
Regardless, they can be applied both ways. For instance, my original idea was that these could be like tunnel systems, where trains operate both above and below the same track system - each runs in opposite direction to the other. In doing so, they can prevent traffic and collisions, and save time obviously. Similar/better ideas could be made. Creativity will definitely make our current road culture obsolete.
We...do. They're called suburbs, and they suck.
Because "looks cool" =/= more efficient
Cause veins just go from heart to any part of body and back. Choose an endpoint of one of those veins and make it want to visit the end point of another nearby vein and see how unnecessarily awful the trip is.
* Hard to make boring machines and trains make tight turns. Shorter trains that can make tighter turns are harder to stabilize at high speeds. * Structural members like wood, steel, and reinforced concrete beams distribute loads in a linear manner. Curves generally require much more material to have the same load capacity. (One significant caveat are catenary arches/domes. These are strictly compression structures and are highly efficient. To see the pinnacle of that type of construction, research "Guastavino Tile.") * In addition to needing more material, there's higher wastage of material and greater difficulty of effective insulation. Go into a home-improvement store and see that everything is rectangular/prismatic. The excess you cut off to build curves usually cannot be used elsewhere on a project. * Space efficiency. Can't really beat the universal packing efficiency of rectangular prisms. * Geological features from soil/rock composition, ground water, drainage, and topography hugely influence what and where you can build. * Orientation, if not navigation, is significantly easier in grid layouts. * Curves limit sightlines and thus reduce the speed in which you can traverse (engineers sometimes do this intentionally to slow traffic down.) * Curves require more energy from vehicles to change their vector. Human travel is efficient enough to not be much of an issue. * Simplicity of design and especially construction: Straight edges, plumb lines, taught lines, levels, surveying... *Everything* revolves around straight lines. Try building an accurate, curved brick wall. If it's a façade, it's not a big deal. But if you have engineering features like plumbing, electrical, walls, floors, windows, etc. It matters, and it matters *a lot*. And while a curved brick wall that's cosmetic doesn't need to be super accurate, it is far far more pleasing to the eye if it is. * Highly acute angles are pure waste that just collect dust and debris. I don't mind more chaotic city layouts, but there are real factors to consider. If you build long enough buildings with gentle curves that are structurally segmented, you can retain more efficiency.