>>1278453>>1278498Depends on location. Residential neighborhoods that don't want through-traffic should avoid road grids, but include pedestrian paths that function like grids. Many "dream home" buyers also tend to want interesting lots to build on, so if you can break grids by respecting natural land features like creeks, outcrops, and nice forest you've got the best of both worlds.
Downtown, though, grids are unmatched. Of course, you can't redesign downtowns anymore, so it's a moot point.
One factor I've noticed with grids that I want to share: transit stations on grids have diamond-shaped catchment areas, because the 1/4-1/2 mile distance people will walk for transit can only be covered at right angles. This means transit-enabled areas along a corridor zig-zag in size, UNLESS the transit corridor is a diagonal. Take pic-related: outer milwaukee is built on a mega-grid, but there are about a half-dozen diagonal avenues that point directly at downtown. Relative to the mega-grid, the catchment areas would still form diamonds, but relative to the diagonal avenues, the catchment areas form solid blocks in a line. This is why Milwaukee is perfectly suited for BRT along these diagonal avenues.
