Worst City Planning

[LivingInThePast 364]

I'd have to say the Worst City Planning goes to my home city, a city in Texas, where the city planners don't expand roads when they have the chance and insist of gobbling up every single square foot of space and mercilessly four-laning roads without giving anything a darn...trees, houses, drainage, parking lots, it's got to go! The question is, is your city worse?

[SC4Noobie 5]

Not my city, no, but the worst urban planning diaster is LA by far....

[profecy 2]

well that sux, is it the fact that the city is maybe starved for developement that they approve any developement without much thought..........i dunno, jus a thought

**yea id say LA is pretty bad 2, but toronto is pretty bad also, the highways are no where near adequate for its size, and subway system is also not very adequate, they didnt want toronto to become "americanised"

[brancra 1,114]

Hmmm...I'll vote Houston. It doesn't seem as bad as LA because it's not as large, but the city is in complete disarray in terms of planning and organisation.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: LivingInThePast I'd have to say the Worst City Planning goes to my home city, a city in Texas, where the city planners don't expand roads when they have the chance and insist of gobbling up every single square foot of space and mercilessly four-laning roads without giving anything a darn...trees, houses, drainage, parking lots, it's got to go! The question is, is your city worse?quote>

And that city in Texas would be...?

Hmm... you know what city suffers from poor planning? Washington, DC. Nowhere near enough highways; sucky, minimal, charge by distance subway; very few busses....

which is ironic because it was designed from the start to be a well orgainzed city. Problem is, all the guys in 1797 knew of was makign a grid of streets, and, unfortunately, 20th century improvements (particularly highways) were quite lacking since the city lacked a proper Robert Moses type figure to put them there, and it also lacked any forsight of how the advent of highways would make the place get overrun with tourists and school groups, requiring even more transportation infrastructure.

I think the city suffers greatly by having I-95 go around it instead of through it, like was originally planned. Having no highways going through your downtown is a bad idea unless you have a crapload of mass trnasit making up for it, which they don't. Result: traffic is a nightmare.

[DuskTrooper 314]

Houston is poorly planned, but, it still has a certain something about it...

[nycsc4 5,250]

I live in St. Louis and its not so much the planning of the city and the planning of STLMetro, more the condition of the roads and the naming of streets in Downtown STL.

If you are going by street names in Downtown St. Louis, they say it is the hardest city to get around in because not enough of our streets are numbered.

Missouri has some of the worst roads in the country - luckly MODot (Missouri Dept. of Trans) got 1 billion dollars to fix them, so they are much better and the worst freeway in STL is getting torn out next spring, for a bigger better, brand new one. bout time.

but as for capacity and usage, our freeways are pretty good. I-64/US-40 is the one getting torn out, and US-40 out in the county just got widened again. St. Louis City and STLMetro have a total of 7 freeways so that helps. (I-64 | I-70 | I-170 | I-270 | I-44 | I-55 | I-255)

[hamsterTK 93]

Most sprawling cities obviously were badly planned at least depending on how you look at it....same with places that did huge public housing complexes, or those with persistant crime issues stemming from the enviroment that low income people have been put in.

hard to say which is the absolute worst, and to be fair sometimes the worse planning is no planning. But thats not always the case especially with older cities. I dunno...

....but you always pick out individual mistakes and rate those in magnitude.

@livinginthepast: where do you live?

What you said could be applicable with college station too

What bugs me is that south of deacon all major roads in college station are east to west and there must be the assumption everyone wants to be dumped on the bypass or wellborn road(which is too narrow) when we all just want to cut through town and are sick of having to use residential streets with loads of school zones to do it.

This place is pretty big, but it acts like a small town

[BurroDiablo 222]

I can't really speak for Cities, but a town near me has really bad planning. For one, all the kerbs at the side of the roads are at least 4 foot high and you can't drive Trucks through the town because the roads are too narrow.

[Gecko_2006 1]

I'd have to agree with two of the ones I've heard from for my home city. Houston is a complete traffic disaster! There is no mass transit, the roads in the older parts of town are in a terrible state, and we put in lane after lane on highways, expressway after expressway, and the traffic is still terrible! We're getting 6 lane highways going into downtown now! It's ridiculous! But, although Houston is in disarray, of course, like many European cities with the same problem, it has a certain air about it. I hate the weather here, but the city is actually very nice.

[willvette 2]

Northern Nevada Spaghetti Bowl, Reno intersection of US-395 and I-80

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Well, Portsmouth England has 3 bridges in and its the UK's most densly populated city, traffic is fun.

[vester_DK 477]

Originally posted by: ILL Tonkso Well, Portsmouth England has 3 bridges in and its the UK's most densly populated city, traffic is fun.quote>

What do you mean that traffic is fun ?

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

My city, Olathe Kansas, is badly planned as well, the main raods are spread out real far, it was just a small town but devloment is going well, but the roads are still the same, so the main road in the city is entirly blocked up, and you have to wait for 10 minnutes just to go a mile or so when the population is only near 110,000

[Tarkus 6,932]

I concur with Duke87 about DC . . . I've only been there twice, and I can't stand the place.

Originally posted by: El Burro I can't really speak for Cities, but a town near me has really bad planning. For one, all the kerbs at the side of the roads are at least 4 foot high and you can't drive Trucks through the town because the roads are too narrow.quote>

Arrgh!  I hate curbing.  There's a bunch of planners here in the Western US who practice what I call "Faux European" planning.  Basically, they try to imitate older European cities in newly developed suburban areas and do an extremely poor job of it to boot. They do that junk with the high curbs and narrow streets all the time because they think it adds "character" and makes the streets "safer" because it "calms traffic". (So much they can't drive on it!)

Lately, they seem to be "Faux-Euroing" a lot of small towns/rural areas where it looks really out of place--like building these "modern rural roundabouts" with fancy street lights out in the middle of nowhere, and purposely designing them so motorists have to drive on the sidewalk to make it through (why there are sidewalks in the first place is beyond me). 

Then, there's Saint Regis, MT, population 200 . . . nothing more than a couple gas stations and a Holiday Inn (or something equivalent) alongside I-90, but they decided to give it the four-foot curb treatment . . . I only spent a few minutes there passing through, but there were motorists actually driving over the curbing and getting stuck.  Dumbest planning I've ever seen, and the last place I would have expected it.

(End rant . . . --sorry for the long post)

-Tarkus

[hamsterTK 93]

How old are these 4 foot curbs?

I have seen some on old main streets and I mean real historic ones not recreations. I think there is more to them than you think...

BTW, I think its funny how everyone absolutely hates these town centers because their "fake". What do you want the local government  and developers to do, go buy a village in france and air lift it here?

Curbs are important for drainage. And traffic calming makes people more prone to find a parking lot and walk. When you have a mall style situation thats better for business.

To end my rant, its better planning than just declaring anarchy on land use....

Roundabouts though, I completely agree. They are often built really tight so its one long blind corner with loads of vision restricting bushes and nobody knows how to use them, they are just stressful.

Houston is poorly planned, but, it still has a certain something about it...quote>

I know what you mean and everyone says that. No clue what it is. Its totally different from Dallas, which though to be fair i like more(dont curb stomp me on those 4 foot curbs we were talking about)

[KingTitan 6]

YES...evrybody here is an 'expert" when it comes to city planning.

[dadyrghluv 8]

i agree with duke87. washington D.C has got to be the worst planning as far as roads go. i sat in traffic in the middle of july, w/o airconditioning for 4 hours trying to get through that bottleneck.

pple from 4 stated work there, from virginia, maryland, parts of P.A and i forget the other. and its horrble.

[Jersey_17011 0]

LOL i totaly agree with hamsterTK, and yes, please don't curb stomp me on those 4 foot curbs lol

[thundercrack83 0]

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was set up by an infant.

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Originally posted by: vester_DK

Originally posted by: ILL Tonkso Well, Portsmouth England has 3 bridges in and its the UK's most densly populated city, traffic is fun.quote>

What do you mean that traffic is fun ?quote>

Its sarcasm, as in Portsmouth was responsable for one of the worst traffic jams in History, causing problems in northern france because they couldnt let cars off the Continental Ferries in Portsmouth, and it clogged up the UK South East Motorways. Basicly, an accident on the largest of the bridges in and out was put out of use by an accident, so all traffic was diverted to the other 2 smaller bridges and because of this, an accident happened on one of the the other bridges. As a result the Trains were running at capacity too. Oh, and some people didnt move an inch in well over 10 hours.

[DOXXP29 5]

Yeah, DC is really bad, but the adjacent northern Virginia area, especially Fairfax, is even worse! In Arlington (right across from DC and actually a part of DC until Va. got ahold of it by annexing it), the chamber of commerce actually has a pamphlet on how to decipher the roads and the inconsistencies that abound over there. In the '80's or '90's, they started to try to list the irregularities and breaks in the roads, but no sooner did they get started and they had so many pages of problems they were gonna need ANOTHER pamphlet explaining how to decipher the first one! Making it worse, it's based on a sensible grid with typical numbering and alphabetical/syllable system, but there are so many exceptions it has become a nightmare for drivers. All this without even getting into the horrible roads themselves, runaway development and the worst traffic light timing and intersection design I've seen.

[Giligone 10]

I would have to say one of the worst planned cities is Kitchener-Waterloo in Ontario. Uggg. It is virtually impossible to go anywhere without a car. The entire region is low density sprawl! There is no real downtown area... well there is but its dead and abandoned and not a nice place to go. Its just generally not a nice place to live IMO.

[petriknl 15]

mm in the Netherlands we have a very strong tradition of National planning. Worst city here could be Rotterdam. Funny to see that some Americans here siad that the cityroads were not numbered well.. In Holland almost no cityroad has got a number.

[winkosmosis 3]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: LivingInThePast I'd have to say the Worst City Planning goes to my home city, a city in Texas, where the city planners don't expand roads when they have the chance and insist of gobbling up every single square foot of space and mercilessly four-laning roads without giving anything a darn...trees, houses, drainage, parking lots, it's got to go! The question is, is your city worse?quote>

And that city in Texas would be...?

Hmm... you know what city suffers from poor planning? Washington, DC. Nowhere near enough highways; sucky, minimal, charge by distance subway; very few busses....

which is ironic because it was designed from the start to be a well orgainzed city. Problem is, all the guys in 1797 knew of was makign a grid of streets, and, unfortunately, 20th century improvements (particularly highways) were quite lacking since the city lacked a proper Robert Moses type figure to put them there, and it also lacked any forsight of how the advent of highways would make the place get overrun with tourists and school groups, requiring even more transportation infrastructure.

I think the city suffers greatly by having I-95 go around it instead of through it, like was originally planned. Having no highways going through your downtown is a bad idea unless you have a crapload of mass trnasit making up for it, which they don't. Result: traffic is a nightmare.quote>

Are you kidding? Highways in a city is NOT a good thing and a gridded pattern is the best. I've noticed  a lot of people on this forum claiming that grids are bad and highways going through a city are good. Have you folks never read any urban geography literature?? As a geographer it's pretty disturbing that people interested in urban development theory are so misinformed.

[montrouge 2]

Originally posted by: ilikehotdogsalot From Google Earth, Washington D.C looks well planned, but when you drive there, That's a whole different story.quote>

 

In Paris too

Paris has one of worst traffic in Europe

[Uumke 0]

Well, I don't think you can call European cities planned. (most of them), there's mostly a long history. The city centres were all built in a time there wasn't such thing as a car.

But if I have to pcik a city with the worst planning, I'd go with LA

[gonza122 0]

Come on! this is nothing compared to Buenos Aires!

1: Country planning

     As we know, Buenos Aires is a big city (13 million: 1/3 population of argentina). The problem is:

    This city is getting overcrowded! and people fom all the country keep coming because it is, soposely, "where there are a lot of jobs" but it has a lot of unenployment (around 13%). Another Reason is that mostly of the other cities have very poor infrastructure, so EVERYONE is coming here.

2: City planning:

    The construction rules are disastrous! there are 32-stories buildings next to houses!(a lot of cases)

    There are huge apartament neighborhoods! (see picture: img91.imageshack.us/img91/9814/bsasaere0kb.jpg )

Well, i think there's more to tell, but not SO important!

TK.

[hamsterTK 93]

quote>

Dude? thats ridiculous. Pure chaos. no markings on the road?

BTW, I agree, saying DC is bad because lack of freeways...whatever. Maybe the traffic is bad, but freeways in the central part would ruin it. Its a beautiful city that was planned to be very dramatic and imposing for visitors, lke rome. Freeways would wreck it

You know they were gonna build a ton of freeways there in the 1970's. Luckily that got rejected and they built the metro instead.

I hope they go ahead and build a ton of modern streetcars there. When I visited in high school we actually walked everywhere since they didnt want us to ride the metro. i was sad ;( but at least when everyone was eating lunch in the big mall thats attached to union station I was up on the bus deck watching acela and Marc trains lol im such a nerd

[Tarkus 6,932]

Originally posted by: KingTitan YES...evrybody here is an 'expert" when it comes to city planning.quote>

Yeah, admittedly, I'm not a city planner.  But honestly, some of them are so terrible at it, all of us here complaining about it could do a better job.  Heck, a John Madden bobblehead could do a better job . . .

And hamsterTK, my biggest problem with curbs is that I keep hitting them!  Whenever I come back home to visit my parents during a break from college, I have to park in the street because there's not room in the driveway--I don't know how many times my dad has fussed at me about it.  Actually, a 4-foot curb might be better provided it wasn't exactly straight up-and-down because one could actually see it when one parks next to it . . .

If you saw the ones in St. Regis, MT, though, I think you'd agree that they're completely uncalled for. They're right off of the interchange with I-90, and they narrow the street a ton and make it nearly impossible to get around the corners without driving over them and getting stuck.  And there's a lot of semis and a Greyhound bus stop there--someone didn't think that one through.

-Tarkus