I’m back from Philadelphia and during my time exploring the city I noticed something really neat about the city blocks in south-eastern Center City. Most of the blocks have alleyways or dividing streets making them significantly smaller than the other blocks. Urban form, including shorter or longer city blocks are important to urban communication. Many thoughtful city planners and designers will acknowledge the importance of smaller city blocks which allow for multiple, overlapping paths through a city.
Streets have a need for mixed primary uses, and Jane Jacobs says that “most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.” This makes walking through a city easier and faster. It also helps isolated neighborhoods, which are apt to be socially abandoned. Isolated blocks or neighborhoods will have a negative social, physical, and economic impact on the city. In The Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jacobs presents a detailed analysis of the blocks in New York City, of which I will spare you the details. Jacobs summarizes by saying:
I bring up this problem not merely to berate the anomalies of project planning again, but to indicate that frequent streets and short blocks are valuable because of the fabric of intricate cross-use that they permit among the users of a city neighborhood. Frequent streets are not an end in themselves. They are a means towards an end… Like mixtures of primary use, frequent streets are effective in helping to generate diversity only because of the way they perform.
So the means by which short blocks and frequent streets work (bringing together a mixture of users) and the results they accomplish (growth of diversity) are inseparable. As Jacobs says, the relationship is reciprocal. Here are some pictures of shorter city blocks created by alleyways and frequent streets in Philadelphia. The result is appealing aesthetically and also appealing functionally. I spent hours walking through these neighborhoods. Enjoy.
Oh, also I found via Bricoleurbanism a visual of urban form/fabric drawings in 9 cities, which does a great job of visualizing the fabric of the different street networks.
There are dozens of these neat alleyways which create smaller and very walkable city blocks. Unfortunately I was only able to take a few pictures, but I have plenty of pictures of urban vernacular architecture in Philly that I plan on posting very soon.
Night Pictures by the Hotel
I’m not a photographer. Apologies to all.