The Beautiful Hidden Logic of Cities by Erin Davis shows the streets of various cities in the United States color coded by suffix - (street, road, avenue, etc). From where I've lived there seemed to be a clear logic to streets, avenues, boulevards and others. In my mind minor city streets are streets, avenues are wide long arteries and boulevards are even wider, often with a median. Roads are suburban versions of avenues while drives, ways and lanes are suburban versions of streets (except in northwest Philadelphia where lanes are strangely like avenues). However it turns out that other cities have a very different arrangement. Where I live now there are tiny streets called "avenues"-that just seems wrong to me! The example above from Chicago shows that outside of the downtown areas most of the north-south streets are avenues while the east-west streets alternate between streets and avenues.
The Hidden Logic of Cities
The Hidden Logic of Cities
The Hidden Logic of Cities
The Beautiful Hidden Logic of Cities by Erin Davis shows the streets of various cities in the United States color coded by suffix - (street, road, avenue, etc). From where I've lived there seemed to be a clear logic to streets, avenues, boulevards and others. In my mind minor city streets are streets, avenues are wide long arteries and boulevards are even wider, often with a median. Roads are suburban versions of avenues while drives, ways and lanes are suburban versions of streets (except in northwest Philadelphia where lanes are strangely like avenues). However it turns out that other cities have a very different arrangement. Where I live now there are tiny streets called "avenues"-that just seems wrong to me! The example above from Chicago shows that outside of the downtown areas most of the north-south streets are avenues while the east-west streets alternate between streets and avenues.