Architect and urban & computational designer Abhinav Bhardwaj made this great set of slides comparing urban design in the US and Europe, peppered with pithy observations like:
- European space is shaped on purpose: American open space is what’s left over.
- Small blocks make more corners, more routes, more street life.
- A fine grid offers hundreds of routes; the tree offers one way out.
tbf katy freeway is over 100m wide in some parts. but hopefully that is rare, and probably is ‘unreasonable’.
Those dudes need some more trains over there.
Fun facts: The Katy Freeway goes to Katy, Texas, and Katy, Texas is a southern terminus of the Katy Railroad (formally the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad, or “MKT”). The Katy was a major passenger railroad once upon a time.
So in a way, the freeway is helping motorists get to the trains, just trains that are in the past.
That’s a freeway though, I suppose.