WI: London Had A Grid System

[kernals12]

In 1666, London was wiped out by a fire. This left a blank slate for a potential reorganization of the capital, which was unfortunately not undertaken. One proposed idea was this grid system

This was well before America put them into almost every single downtown.

Just imagine London with a rigid grid with easy to understand streets that would be numbered. And more importantly, imagine the influence this would have all over the world
Think of the poor people of Boston IOTL

Or maybe Haussmann might be interested in doing this to Paris.

So how bout it?

We can further supplement this straightness with this 19th century plan to straighten the Thames.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Aren't perfectly square blocks a Spanish thing?

Perhaps another PoD which gets this could be the Armada succeeding and the Army of Flanders torching London.

 

[kernals12]

Aren't perfectly square blocks a Spanish thing?

Perhaps another PoD which gets this could be the Armada succeeding and the Army of Flanders torching London.

Londoners be like

 

[Jared]

Then it would be gridlocked.

 

[The Professor]

The problem with grids is that it tends to all look the same so unless signage is clear you get lost fairly easy. An example of this being Milton Keynes's gridded roundabout system.
Thus the problem isn't "no grids are difficult" but "no signage is difficult".
If London did have a grid system installed after the fire then I imagine eventually people would make effort to distinguish parts from other parts.

 

[Kellan Sullivan]

Speaking under correction here, but this (the gridded layout) WAS in Wren's plans for rebuilding London. The reason it was never implemented was because the former owners of the land refused to allow it and wanted everything rebuilt "as it was before". The crown didn't have the money to buy up the land in order to do this, so essentially "new London" and "old London" tended to look very similar.

PoD might be for the Crown to have more money so that Wren can have a free hand. @Emperor Constantine did this in his TL IIRC.

 

[kernals12]

The problem with grids is that it tends to all look the same so unless signage is clear you get lost fairly easy. An example of this being Milton Keynes's gridded roundabout system.
Thus the problem isn't "no grids are difficult" but "no signage is difficult".
If London did have a grid system installed after the fire then I imagine eventually people would make effort to distinguish parts from other parts.

Any New Yorker will tell you how incredibly easy it is to navigate Grids. You can travel in perfectly straight lines and you now exactly what direction you're going all the time. This is helpful for people unfamiliar with the area. It would make it much easier to become a Hackney Cab driver.

 

[Scott_B]

Yeah, having not grown up in a grid based city, I personally don’t find them easier to navigate...

 

[kernals12]

Yeah, having not grown up in a grid based city, I personally don’t find them easier to navigate...

It especially helps if all the streets are numbered. If you're on 4th street and need to get to 10th, you know you need to walk 6 blocks.

 

[The Professor]

Any New Yorker will tell you how incredibly easy it is to navigate Grids. You can travel in perfectly straight lines and you now exactly what direction you're going all the time. This is helpful for people unfamiliar with the area. It would make it much easier to become a Hackney Cab driver.

Most people in London are on foot.

 

[kernals12]

Then it would be gridlocked.

As opposed to Mazelocked?

 

[Kellan Sullivan]

Yeah, having not grown up in a grid based city, I personally don’t find them easier to navigate...

Same.

It especially helps if all the streets are numbered. If you're on 4th street and need to get to 10th, you know you need to walk 6 blocks.

And you better just hope they haven't rechristened streets since they laid out the grid. For instance, the town I went to university in was laid out as such. But then, in the last twenty years a bunch of streets got renamed after politicians/figures historically associated with the place. And suddenly you had a (stupid example) first avenue that became Hilary Clinton Street, and 2e became Barbara Bush Road, then third street in the middle of nowhere, because the blocks where fourth through eighth street WERE got bulldozed during urban RE-development. So there's now ENTIRELY new thoroughfares there.

And given London's sprawl in the 18th and 19th centuries, I could DEFINITELY see something similar happening

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

This was done in Lisboa after the 1704 earthquake. The city on the flats along the river were rebuilt on a grid of relatively broad streets. On the hills not so much.

I grew up in Indiana where the rural roads are often laid out on a mile measured grid that uses a XY axis system for road signs. Somewhere near the center of the county there is a zero point. If your address is '7567 North, County Road 350 West' you are 7.567 mies north of the Division road running east-west through the zero point and on a road located 3.5 miles west of the north-south Meridian Road. If the sign at the intersection reads county line road you know you are transiting to a different road grid. Makes it near impossible to get lost on the flat prairie That & you can see the town water tower of your destination 13km away on the horizon, high above the corn and soybeans.

 

[Scott_B]

Same.



And you better just hope they haven't rechristened streets since they laid out the grid. For instance, the town I went to university in was laid out as such. But then, in the last twenty years a bunch of streets got renamed after politicians/figures historically associated with the place. And suddenly you had a (stupid example) first avenue that became Hilary Clinton Street, and 2e became Barbara Bush Road, then third street in the middle of nowhere, because the blocks where fourth through eighth street WERE got bulldozed during urban RE-development. So there's now ENTIRELY new thoroughfares there.

And given London's sprawl in the 18th and 19th centuries, I could DEFINITELY see something similar happening

Yup, and the numbering wouldn’t be a guarantee. Glasgow in the UK has a grid layout, and it’s all just street names.