The 15 Most Iconic City Grids in the World

Not all cities are built the same. We know this because we've been to places other than New York and seen the sheer disorder of their street networks. Seriously, have you looked at a map of Boston recently? We don't advise it. It's like a group of city planners decided to lay out the roads one day by taking turns pissing blindfolded onto a scroll of parchment—during an earthquake.

The point is, street alignment can say a lot about the character of a given city. It's apparent in places like D.C., where the chaos of the grid mirrors much of what you'll find on street-level, and in the majesty associated with cities like Paris, London, and Barcelona. At least some of it has to do with the geometry of the grid, the way the city lights align in patterns when viewed from afar, and how you can see certain monuments from 10 miles away.

Get to know the labyrinths you live inside: The 15 Most Iconic City Grids in the World.

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15. Phoenix

Phoenix is a flat city with an equally uninteresting street layout. So why, then, is its grid classified as 'iconic'? Well, it's the closest thing we could find to abosulte perfection. Streets run north, south, east and west, with every eight numbered streets equaling exactly one mile. As a result, the distance between 16th and 32nd streets is exactly two miles. Not impressed? Consider that "adjustments" at various points in the grid account for the curvature of the earth. One of the only major roads that doesn't adhere to the grid runs— get this—at a 45-degree angle to the rest of the streets. Yeah, this is a city designed by freaks. Or, you know, smart people. People who would vomit after seeing a map of Paris.

14. Portland, OR

If stereotypes are to be believed, Portland's grid is every bit as forward as its population. The city's square grid system, with micro-sized 200-foot blocks and narrow streets that are sometimes only 60 feet wide and about the length from the pitcher's mound to home plate, creates something of a fraternal feel. The city is scaled for pedestrian use, with small, navigable blocks making the cross-city commute a manageable task rather than a tall order. The University of California Press puts it best: "Streets are not gulfs to be negotiated. As a consequence of this fabric, pedestrians seem to belong downtown; the city is scaled for people on foot. Buildings, even when tall, do not loom."

13. Toronto

Toronto is by all measures a grid city. Arterials appear in the form of wide avenues, and rectangular blocks dominate the city's dozens of wards. Streets meet at right angles. And yet, so many more roads don't conform to the city's more than 200-year old street plan. Certain roads align with the old Lake Iroquois shoreline, or other dominant aspects of the city's topography. These contour roads give the northern city an Old World feel, an organic take on a modern concept.

12. Barcelona, Spain

The Eixample district of Barcelona is known for its iconic street grid, characterized by wide roads, square blocks, and chamfered avenues. The blocks include wide open spaces that continue across adjacent intersections, allowing sunlight and ventilation to perimeter buildings. Wide streets are a godsend for traffic flow along with the shaved-off corners, which make turning a seamless process for the many vehicles that traverse the neighborhood daily. New York might want to take a cue.

11. Philadelphia

Often hailed as the first American city designed on a grid, Philadelphia boasts a street system that's more than 300 years old. The city was designed on a rectangular grid in 1682 at the apparent request of its founder, William Penn. Wide streets would meet each other at right angles, in a design said to safeguard against the overcrowding, fire, and disease so common to European cities. The efficiency is apparent today, but the grid apparently wasn't enough to stymie everything else plaguing modern day Philadelphia.

10. Copenhagen, Denmark

A narrow Medieval street grid, a pedestrian-only main street and the large-scale provision of stoops, awnings, and doorways make Copenhagen one of the great walking cities of the world. Car-free spaces dot the grid, and traffic is kept to a minimum by the lack of city-center parking space. Parking lots have been turned into public squares and nearly 7,000 now live in the city center of the Danis metropolis. Bike lanes and pedestrian-priority streets can be found throughout the city, making Copenhagen's one of the world's most pedestrian friendly street grids. Patches of rectangular grid can be found throughout the city, though like in any old region, the plot sizes are inconsistent. Still, it's hard to imagine visitors have much to complain about.

9. Rome

Ancient Roman cities boasted some of the world's first street grids. Skeletons of those plans can be seen in the Rome of today. While not solely reliant on intersecting avenues and boulevards, the Roman 'grid'—more of a serpentine matrix—connects major landmarks and monuments for optimal viewing. Museum of the City has the details: "One could see the Piazza del Popolo from the Piazza Venezia located one mile apart. This street that connects them is not axial, solely relying on major landmarks."

8. San Francisco

San Francisco's streets are confusing even before you consider the city's navigational downfall: multiple street grids. For one, the entire city is built on hills, and two, several of the roads take on forms of their own, twisting, turning and winding every which way to land passengers at their eventual destinations. Both streets and avenues are numbered, so neglecting to mention the full names of an arterial could leave someone miles away from his or her intended destination. Two of the grids—which we should mention, are highly organized—meet each other downtown, at an angle along Market Street. Just another reason San Fran isn't the country's straightest city.

7. Boston

We'd be glorifying Boston's street plan if we called it a grid. Take a look at the map, and see if you can try to figure out what city planners were thinking when they laid out this geometric nightmare during Colonial times. Consisting of curving, winding, and sometimes spiraling streets, along with patches of what we in sanity-land might call grid, the Greek-inspired layout breaks from the norm for a city with consistent topography. That's to say: Boston isn't built on a hill, so why is it so messed up? Likely, city officials intended it to be this way, with nature dictating how the streets would be laid out for maximum oohs and ahhs from high-minded aristocrats. So that's why that flock of New England geese won't get out of the way when you've got places to be and no desire to flatten a family of birds in the middle of the road. The Bostonians have left them spoiled.

6. Chicago

Consider the Chicago grid a functional re-imagining of New York, with square blocks that aren't so suffocating and a numbering system that makes it hard to get lost. In a city plagued by dysfunction, corruption, and homicide, this is one thing that works. The straight streets so common to the Midwest comprise much of the Chicago grid, but diagonal shortcuts serve as major thoroughfares in many parts of the city. The land's flat orientation makes for an easy journey from one end of the city to another. Still, like any region where millions are unnaturally packed into a considerably meager space, Chicagoland is a traffic nightmare.

5. Savannah, GA

Savannah's iconic squares are reminiscent of colonial times, when rich, white land-owners prospered on the backs of slaves—the South was a thriving center of American prosperity. Savannah's city plan mirrored the southern way of life with its emphasis on charm and beauty, which only complemented the efficiency of its layout. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Savannah's grid allows for more open space than in any city layout in history. The city was organized into 24 squares, known as wards, each surrounded by four civic and four residential blocks. More than 20 of the squares still exist today. Some say the street grid, with its wards, squares, and identical lots, points to the Utopian ideals of the colony. "Savannah's plan reflects political and organizational considerations of the day," the New Georgia Encyclopedia reads. "The regularity of these lots controlled the size and rhythm of development in the third dimension to create a visually diverse and humanly scaled city."

4. London

The chaotic London street plan is another that we're hard-pressed to classify as a grid. Like any city of the Old World, London's maze of streets is an organic mix of green space, plazas, and curiously winding roads. Patches of grid can be found throughout a street map, but they don't follow any real semblance of order. Rather, they're just there because any time you want to pack a few million people into a relatively small space, the small amount of sense required to plan something efficiently will undoubtedly kick in. Cheers to utter disarray. Hey, at least you're in London.

3. Washington D.C.

Fittingly, the street layout of America's capital city is centered around the U.S. Capitol Building. The basic premise makes sense, but like anything associated with D.C., the Washington street grid is way more complicated than that. A labyrinth consiting of narrow streets, one-ways, radials, circles, squares, and four distinct quadrants, not to mention two major bodies of water and a range of hills and other natural formations, the Beltway's grid is every bit as pretentious the name of its designer, Pierre L'Enfant. The plan's included diagonal streets were designed to provide sweeping views and vistas of the city, according to Yahoo. The occasional plaza memorializes D.C.'s immense history. Ask any frustrated D.C. resident today and he might tell you the system of four quadrants, a few lettered thoroughfares, and diamond interchanges is a traffic nightmare, and nothing else.

2. Paris

The Paris road network isn't so much a grid as it is a convoluted mess. That's an attribute you'll find present in most old cities, so we'll give the Parisians a pass. They gave us the Eiffel Tower, after all, and idealized romance, too. Consisting of major boulevards and avenues, along with longer roads taking drivers to the city's outskirts, the streets often end up aligning in a star formation, a fitting Easter egg given the artistic charm associated with The City of Light. Closer to the ground, though, drivers and pedestrians will find a collection of largely incongruous city blocks— a nightmare for those used to New York's venerated system of rectangles. Street names are indicated on buildings at each intersection. We doubt they'll help.

1. New York

Despite the city's reputation as a traffic nightmare and a bonafide jaywalking haven, New York's rectangular street matrix was no accident. Conceived more than 200 years ago, the plan would give rise to Manhattan's explosive development through the 19th and 20th centuries. According to the New York Times, it mapped out modest but equal lots—25 by 100 feet in dimension—for public purchase. New Yorkers live within the same narrow confines today, and most of them know it. While it's now hailed as a beacon in the history of city development, not everyone was on board with the New York street grid initially. French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville once called the 11 major avenues and 155 crosstown streets "relentless monotony." How else would you describe a system where drivers and pedestrians have no way of telling where they're standing until they look up at the street signs?