Talk:City block

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Untitled[edit]

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CityBlock good place to start: 1/16 mile =length of street 1/8 mile = length of avenue except new york midtown manhattan 1/20 mile = length of street 1/10 to 1/5 mile = length of avenue

It would help if we had a primary source for this. The linked page isn't a primary source and in fact doesn't appear to be terribly reliable. 69.140.80.231 02:52, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What the article says about "older countries" isn't necessarily true. See Grid plan.

The article previously said that there are 8 city blocks to a mile in America; this may be true in many U.S. cities but by no means all. Izzycat 22:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chicago is one such city where this is true...every block is a 1/8-mile by 1/8-mile square (except for in the Loop, where they are mostly a bit smaller & vary in size & shape). That said, I agree that saying it's standard in the U.S. is a rather odd, sweeping generalization. It looks like this statement was "repaired" by adding the word "some", but it still strikes me as odd & uncited. -Rhrad 04:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 05:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Minkowski space?[edit]

I'm not sure the see-also about Minkowski space is relevant to this article. It should probably be cut. Traditionally Minkowski space uses a distance metric that is closer to euclidean than manhattan. At best it is tangential. Certainly, the article on Minkowski space tells one nothing related to city blocks.76.91.90.112 (talk) 04:10, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn’t this just really an American term?[edit]

The idea of the “city block” as unit or a distance is surely a uniquely American concept? I grew up in Scotland in a small town which was planned in the 18th/19th C. on a grid, and nobody talked of a block; I then moved to Glasgow, where the city centre is laid out on a Victorian grid, and nobody talked about a block either. It certainly isn’t used in any sense to convey distance as it appears to be in the U.S. anywhere else I’ve been (“a couple of blocks over”/ “he went three blocks…” etc.). It is used casually in “walking round the block”, but really only in the sense of “going away and coming back again”. Jock123 (talk) 22:26, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely and am adding a bit to the article. APW (talk) 06:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is an American term in the sense on the continent of America. City blocks are the main tool of city development not only in the USA but also Canada, Mexico, Argentina and elsewhere in the America. It can also be seen in Australian and New Zealand cities as well as other towns (Milton Keynes, in the UK, for example). The thing I don't understand completely is the numbering system - how does this work? In Britain numbers start at 1 and continue. They never skip numbers unless something was demolished, etc. But in New York and Buenos Aires I saw that each block has its own kind of number - '500 block', '600 block etc.). So it appears that numbers in one block can be, for example, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, etc.' and then in the next block they will be 201, 203, 205, 207, etc.) - is this right? Why is this? I presume it is to make things easier to find?? The article needs to explain the concept of city blocks better and not assume that we all live in a country where this is familiar.--Xania ^talk 23:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Article without firm foundations[edit]

It seems strange that there is no mention of the origins of city blocks nor any usage of the chain measure in the article (22yds) as this and the furlong (10 chains) was the basis of the first deliberately designed city blocks. DickyP (talk) 15:15, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Cycling mode" in this context is inaccurate as cycling was not a prevalent mode of transportation during the early and mid-20th century, at least in the United States. Cycling for anything other than a form of recreation is a relatively recent phenomenon. So, I think it would be more accurate to say that superblocks only disrupted the pedestrian mode, which was predominant in such times in the cities, along with things like jitneys and trolleys. I love cycling, but let's not try to create a history that never existed. The car vs. bike thing is already bad enough without having a bunch of Critical Mass types erroneously thinking that the car took away "the good ol' days". Arlesd (talk) 02:18, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology[edit]

Daniel Cassidy's "Irish etymologies" are pretty much hogwash. See here for a more detailed treatment of why. I think we should remove the Etymology section as a result, since it exists based on his assertions. ClockwerkMao (talk) 19:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perimeter block[edit]

Hi, I think the Perimeter block topic is worth to be stand-alone or at least get heavily extended within this context. It has proven to be among the most satisfying and efficient ways to build cities. See e.g. de:Blockrandbebauung for refs. Cheers, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 15:45, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Usage for distance[edit]

From reading American novels, I got into the mindframe that uses blocks for distances, long ago. But for the first time, I got curious how large these distances are, and the article doesn't offer any help in that regard, only offhand mentions the example of "three city blocks".

Now, according to the article, blocks are either squares or rectangles with a grid size of as small as 80 metres (Portland) up to as large as 80x274 metres (Manhattan). So, when people say that a distance is "three city blocks", would I calculate 80x3 (=240 metres) or 274x3 (~800 metres), according to my location and/or direction I am heading? After all, "three blocks far" in Manhattan alone would mean an obscure distance that can be one third smaller (or three times larger) than one expects.

Or, am I off in this regard, and people actually don't count the "normal" blocks for directions, but the superblocks? After all, the superblocks are the central topic in the article. Which would mean three blocks = three kilometres or even three miles (thus, five kilometres)? Thanks for anyone clarifying this. --Enyavar (talk) 13:24, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

When describing something as "three blocks away", it's less about giving a firm objectively measured distance as it is giving directions. If I tell you that, for example, a subway station is three blocks south from where we are, it's telling you not so much how many feet you'll walk as it is giving a count for walking there as a form of landmark navigation. Can one figure out the distance if they know what the length of a block is? Sure, but that's not what the usage is about.

That said, I'm not sure how to incorporate that into the article. And as such I don't know if this is an appropriate thing to be discussing on a Wikipedia talk page. oknazevad (talk) 03:13, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Context confusion in Superblock[edit]

In the Superblock->History section, the following sentence makes no sense in the context of the paragraph:

"Planners, today, now know that the street discontinuity and the multi-lane roads associated with superblocks have caused the decline of pedestrian and bicycle use everywhere with the "sprawl" pattern."

Yet the thematic statement of the paragraph, and the rest of the paragraph, states the opposite - to organize space in a way that was more "pedestrian-friendly" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.170.161.43 (talk) 08:48, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]