How to describe cities? [purplecthulhu]

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I'm reading a book at the moment by a US author that's set in Europe. He describes cities I know well, like London and Paris, reasonably well (though at times it sees as if he's reading things off a map), but persists in using the word 'block' to describe the relationship of buildings to streets eg. 'I walked two blocks to the baker's'. This grates with me, since I don't think the term block is that useful in descrbing European cities, but it wasn't a problem for a north american friend I discussed this with.

So I decided to put this to a poll. I just hope there's a way of correlating the answers to the two questions...

This is my first poll, so be gentle!

[Poll #262171]

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There are 22 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I'm trying to be gentle ... but a little ambiguity would have been useful. There are parts of some European cities which are somewhat block-like for a while ... parts of Georgian London, even.

But generally, yeah - that grates on me too :-)

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I have to give that a "sometimes". I live in New York City, large parts of which are built on grids. And we routinely talk about distances in "blocks", and then footnote whether we mean "street blocks" (from, say, 48th Street to 49th Street) or "avenue blocks" (from, say, Sixth to Seventh Avenue) because they aren't the same size.

There are also parts of the city where the grid gives way to topographic reality, and others built pre-grid.

How do you describe in-city distances, then?

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I've sometimes tried to use approximate walking times, if I couldn't remember precisely how many street corners/stop lights someone would pass on their way from A to B. That would involve some guessing, though, about comparative body conditions and general zest for walking.

I feel a bit handicapped without my grid system, truth to tell.

Crazy(and loving those diagonal roads in Chicago, adding spicy mayhem to the grids...)Soph

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In metres or pubs :)

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That works, and gives me something I can think in if I want to bother doing the math: the shorter NY blocks are 80 or 90 meters (12 blocks is a kilometer).

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I'd generally use rough estimates of distance - 1/2 a mile, 200 yards - or time it would take to walk - probably take my own walking speed and add 50%.

You're right that some grid cities have variable block sizes, which would make using the simple term 'block' meaningless or at least unhelpful. Not that this stops most people, as far as I've seen.

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When I was in Cardiff in the summer, I kept wanting it to be in blocks. I simultaneously thought that I could get to the same place by going left and then right as I would if I want right and then left, and knew that I wouldn't -- it was very weird.

Blocks are, I think, most useful for strangers -- they're like pop-down menus that cut down the time it takes to learn an interface but aren't necessary when you're familiar with the program.

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Do you think the term 'block' has any useful meaning in describing european cities?

Yes, sometimes. For example, part of the city I live in, the Georgian New Town, was built on a grid. (A very attractive and nicely-patterned grid, but nevertheless, a grid.)

Do you live in North American or another country where cities are built on a grid?

Yes, I live in Scotland, which is not in North America, but nonetheless has areas in major cities which are built on a grid.

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I don't think cities need to be built on a grid for it to be useful to have a word for the concept of "from this street to the next street." It would be nice if there were a more appropriate word for it, though.

-J

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There are a variety of possibilites for this...

How about - 'go to the next corner', or 'take the third street on the left'...

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But can you quantify it? I don't think it's possible to say "go five to the next corners." Blocks are useful not only in measuring distance, for which they're kind of crap even in mostly-gridlike cities, but also in measuring how many streets you walk past before you turn left.

-J

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Beyond a few roads, I'd probably revert to using landmarks - turn left at the Eight Belles, for example.

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Mm, while that wouldn't work for me at all. I don't like it when people give me directions that way here, either. I want to know street names and lefts and rights, because otherwise I'll never get there.

-J

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I can never remember street names. And too often here, you can't find the street names even if you know them!

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Despite years' residence in non-grid plan cities, and an intellectual conviction that "block" doesn't really cut the mustard in describing where a place is, the word still persists in my active vocabulary.

Crazy(you can take the girl out of the midwest, but you can't take the midwest out of the girl...)Soph

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I think that British suburbs are often built on a grid system, or some rough approximation of one. So I voted yes and yes.

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Thinking more on this, I begin to realise that my way of navigating in cities is probably twisted by not having grown up with a grid.

I navigate by landmarks, which makes high rise buildings quite useful, and can never remember what street names are (OK - with Edmonton's numbered roads one can't really forget, but I can never remember what number Whyte is, for example).

I wonder if there are fewer landmark-navigators from gridded cities?

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I grew up near Whitehaven (home to Geaoge Washington's grandmother) and we were always told that it was this town's regular grid pattern that was used as the basis for all the grid-based street plans in the states. How true this is, I don't know--but Whitehaven, at the times of the beginnings of the slave trade _was_ a bigger port than Liverpool (killed off by lack of access by canal and rail as land communications improved) so the physical movement of shipping was there to allow the associated spread of ideas. The grid system's small, constrained as it is by the shape of the natural harbour, and very pretty with carefully-sited churches visible at the end of many of the straight stretches. Much survives and has been restored to its admittedly small-scale Georgian splendour (I always picture the place as it was in the seventies, rather run down and dilapidated and am surprised still at how smart some parts now look).

(Of course, the village I was born in was planned on a series of crescents: when the railway first reached that part of the coast, the intention was to create a more northerly competitor to Morecombe or Grange. Didn't happen, but the grid pattern was used in some of the later housing estates in the twentieth century.)

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I think I've only ever visited Whitehaven once, and that would be in the late-70s or very early-80s. The thing I remember most was the department store with the pneumatic messenging system, sending money etc. from place to place, but I do recall the place looking rather run down. Mind you, most of the UK looked run down at that time.

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It's perfectly good East Anglian English to say "I am taking the dog for a walk around the block" meaning "for a short walk". I don't think that this block has a scientific (S.I.?) definition though.

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Actually I have been known to use that exact phrase - whether for walking the dog or myself. But its not a term that is that helpful for navigation or describing a (European) city.

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It's *less* helpful than in Manhattan, but as other people have said there are grid-like parts of many European cities.

I'm not sure that my neighbours in the UK would have used the word block in the American sense, but if I was to use it in a handwavy way to say "it's 3 blocks over from here to there" then they'd probably understand me. And there's no other word in English English that quite means the same thing (probably because our cities are less grid-like). Similarly there's no one-word translation of "catercorner" (meaning "diagonally across from").

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purplecthulhu

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