Hey there! Do you consider yourself somewhat observational, or just like to know how the things around us work or were designed? If so, that’s great, I’d like to interest you in the world of city/urban planning. This is Gavin, reporting for another semester of blogging on how designs have morphed throughout history, on the ways cities are designed now, which infrastructure services work well and why, what trends cities are following around the world, as well as some of the shortcomings of designs that we may be familiar with. If you like cities but don’t know why, and this stuff sounds interesting, I encourage you to stick around. I will be going over everything in due time, throughout the semester. 

In today’s blog, I will be going over some of the fundamentals of cities, like the basics of road and street types. We see them everywhere: something avenue, something street, something something road – whether we’re using Google or Apple maps to find a route to get somewhere or navigating a plain old map just for fun. If you learn it well, this stuff can actually be useful; especially if you’re traveling to new places frequently, knowing the types of roadways will help give you a heads up to what you should expect when you get there for the first time. If you know this stuff by heart, it will be virtually impossible to get lost in a big city like New York City or Chicago, and will make map reading much easier. Anyways, where do we begin?

 

Roads

We’ll start off with roads, which are arguably the most straightforward out of all classifications. Roads, simply put, are paths that connect two places together. Historically, roads lead out of towns or cities, away from the city/town center and often lead to other cities/towns.

(For future reference, I will refer to cities and towns as just simply cities)

 

Avenues

Avenues are located inside cities and have historically been the main paths of movement. They are defined as slightly wider than streets, with buildings on either side. In some places, avenues are designated streets that run North to South, while in other cities, they run East to West. Furthermore, branching off of avenues are streets, which typically run perpendicular to them and are much quieter paths of transportation.

 

Streets

Now streets are not to be confused with avenues, but by definition they are nearly identical. In most cases, city streets are the same width of avenues, and also have buildings on either side. However, streets run the length of the other pair of cardinal directions compared to avenues: if a city decides to name avenues in its grid going North to South, then in contrast streets will be designated East to West. This naming technique depends on each city though. Do not always assume that all avenues travel North, and all streets West

 

Boulevards

Traditionally boulevards are the widest roads within cities, and have been used for thousands of years. By definition, boulevards are wide streets – always with trees, bushes or other vegetation on the sides, with some sort of median between the two flows of traffic. They’re well liked for their ambiance and shade. If you’ve visited Paris, then you have probably traveled along one. 

 

Now there are a few other road definitions, but they are less important, and aren’t typically seen throughout towns or cities. In the next few blogs, these definitions will come in handy when I start talking about more in depth topics. Now that you’re familiar with some of the definitions, I hope you have an easier time finding your way around. Perhaps next time you’re on Beaver Avenue or South Allen Street, you might observe some of the little things that go into planning!