Something that was very usual in cities of Renaissance is the use of square block distribution oriented east-west and north-south. This kind of distribution is quite clear in Guadalajara’s México downtown, founded in 1542, the years of Charles 5th of Germany and 1st of Spain.
Though Spanish people also had arbitrary twisted streets in many of their medieval cities, they found that in Atemajac’s valley, where Guadalajara was founded, there was no need of saving space or avoiding cliffs or big hills, there was no big river that challenged the trajectory of streets. So most of streets of down town where quite straight and parallel between them.
Many urbanism specialists have seen this special characteristic of Guadalajara very interesting if we realize that it was founded in times when no car motor was already invented with all the needs it carried with for cities infrastructure.
So, even these days after more than 450 years same streets keep giving good service to city needs.
That is why I have decided to make square blocks with long straight streets.
Though Spanish people also had arbitrary twisted streets in many of their medieval cities, they found that in Atemajac’s valley, where Guadalajara was founded, there was no need of saving space or avoiding cliffs or big hills, there was no big river that challenged the trajectory of streets. So most of streets of down town where quite straight and parallel between them.
Many urbanism specialists have seen this special characteristic of Guadalajara very interesting if we realize that it was founded in times when no car motor was already invented with all the needs it carried with for cities infrastructure.
So, even these days after more than 450 years same streets keep giving good service to city needs.
That is why I have decided to make square blocks with long straight streets.
In SimCity 4 game we can see that there are 3 different sizes of squares, the smallest one has a dimension of 64 units of construction by side, the medium one has 128 units by side, and the biggest one is 256 units by side.
I struggled to find an arrangement that could fit accurately in all 3 sizes and that could give me the opportunity to have all kind of avenues and elevated freeways. Next picture shows the model of arrangement for a 64X64 area:
I struggled to find an arrangement that could fit accurately in all 3 sizes and that could give me the opportunity to have all kind of avenues and elevated freeways. Next picture shows the model of arrangement for a 64X64 area:
This image contain an Excel worksheet where small cells contain a letter and color that calls for a use, for example, gray cells with a letter “a” mean “Avenue”, “f” mean Freeway, “r” mean Road, “h” mean residential, “c” mean commercial.So if you can see I have provided this small portion of land of many ways. It is easy to see that this kind of distribution will be very expensive in the big regions, that is way it is necessary to have a plan of the hole map in order to avoid improvisation and patches everywhere, because you can start in small portions of the hole region with a plan for the hole area that will be set as resources get higher with time.
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