CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
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Turning the city’s main streets over to the car and withdrawing commercial uses to the secondary streets of the grid – as has happened in cities worldwide, and continues to do so – goes against the grain of historic evolution.
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http://www.timstonor.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/the-importance-of-grids
I never really liked grid systems, too many junctions. Unless there are some big pointers (like signs, numbering systems), they can be quite difficult to navigate too.
Grids are dull. You need a few crescents and circuses to mix things up a bit. And a medieval-style (human scale) centre always helps.
Nonsense - how can a man made enviornment have a "natural shape". In my experience, the best cities are those that take account of local topography, materials, environment, weather and cultural traditions. That could include grids, but usually doesn't.
"Cities are as natural to humans as beehives to bees".
crowriver - I'm not sure where the quote is from, but its also nonsense. Mass urban/city living is a very recent phenomenon, e.g:
"One hundred years ago, 2 out of every 10 people lived in an urban area. By 1990, less than 40% of the global population lived in a city, but as of 2010, more than half of all people live in an urban area."
Source, World Health Organisation: http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_growth_text/en/
And yet, there is evidence showing that what is now Damascus has been in human habitation for more than 11,000 years.
Perhaps it is just that what we think of as a city, as the urban, has changed over time?
Unbuilt Britain (BBC) compared a couple of designs for rebuilding London after the Great Fire. One was a grid, the other a combination of a circus and a star with a grid in the middle, the circus and star connected by two direct roads. Both designs were put into a traffic flow analysis programme and the latter proved to be the most effective at distributing traffic and shortening journeys (by car presumably).
The best cities are the ones that are constrained by natural features I.e. mountains; lakes; rivers etc
Presumably because once you've built as far as the waterside you're forced to stop there and leave a nice view, rather than slapping down a ring-road and a Tesco Extra.
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