Should Cities be Circles?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Subscribe to Nebula and get $20 off at: go.nebula.tv/c...
Watch this video on Nebula: nebula.tv/vide...
Most cities have streets that are in a grid pattern, cul-de-sacs, or organic jumble. But cities could be arranged as circles, in a radial-concentric configuration. In fact, there are examples throughout history of cities being designed this way. What are the advantages, and why aren't they more popular?
Resources on this topic:
www.sciencedir...
www.sciencedir...
www.sciencedir...
www.sciencedir...
web.archive.or...
Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.
Trans rights.
The Circleville Squaring Company sounds like something out of a children's book.
Like a simpsons episode
It sounds like they would face off against the Squareville Circling Company
@@rooryan
Note: I had this written using an AI cause I'm not that creative nor am I good at Dr. Seuss rhyming schemes.
In the land of Squiggles, where shapes abound,
Two companies clashed, their voices resound.
The Circleville Squaring, a prideful bunch,
Dealt in perfect corners, not a curve to be crunched.
Their rivals, the Squareville Circling crew,
Embraced the round things, both big and brand new.
They'd circle and twirl, with circles galore,
While the Squarers just scoffed, and wanted no more.
"Circles are sloppy!" the Squarers would shout,
"Squares are superior, without a doubt!"
The Circleville crew, with a mischievous grin,
Responded, "Dear Squarers, your shapes are so thin!"
They circled the Squarers, and round they did go,
The Squarers got dizzy, they didn't know how to flow.
So they stomped and they grumbled, with frowns on their face,
As the Circlers just laughed, and continued their chase.
The moral of this, as the story unfolds,
Is that different is okay, new shapes to behold.
So embrace all the shapes, the circles, the squares,
And remember, dear friend, there's room for all pairs!
Sounds like the antagonist
Definitely a villains name
"circleville squaring company" is so funny
The most American thing
What a bunch of squares
hay, this circle is square!
After the squaring was completed, they ought to have renamed it to "Squareville"...
It goes in the square hole
I was so devastated to learn they squared circlevill
And yet, they still call it Circleville, lol.
"You had one job!!" or "You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!"
dang freemasons :P
More to the point they destroyed the mounds.
@@suzettehenderson9278 Such a tragic and sad loss of archeological history.
Karlsruhe in Germany is a City with two major rings around a palace in the middle. The inner ring has a diameter of 900 meters and the outer ring has a diameter of 2.3 kilometers. When going from the west side of the city to the east side, there are two options. Driving along a horizontal line directly having to wait for traffic lights and jams. Or driving along the outer ring with way less traffic and almost equivalent times.
The main benefit for pedestrians and cyclists is being able to orientate along the rays pointing towards the palace, which you can see from most streets in the downtown area.
Also, most larger buildings along the inner ring have a trapezoid shape to fit the curve.
First city that came to mind
It is shown at 7:37
Thomas Jefferson visited Karlsruhe in 1788, was impressed with the street design and used it as a model for Washington D.C.!
Sadly not the circular design tho, but the way the streets lead straight away from the White House is modeled after Karlsruhe.
Karlsruhe is a odd city. One of the very few planned cities of Europe. It looks old, but it's not. (Built/planned in 1715)
And it ended mostly being a half-circle and the most important roads are tangential now.
Cologne has also a circular orientation.
I think Moscow must be one of the most circular cities. Its ring road system (MKAD) consists of three main circles, that are shaped a lot more like actual circles rather than the squares of Beijing. Also, the streets are actually converging to the center, so it is not a grid city with rings around it. At the center, fittingly, is the Kremlin.
MKAD is only one of the ring roads, which is one of the newest ones, finished in 1962.
By the way not only roads follow the circle/chords system but also metro, urban and suburban train networks.
@@di_dmitriev Да я из регионов, в Москву прилетаю только погулять, так что очень посредственно разбираюсь в ее географии. Почему-то думал что МКАД это сразу несколько колец, спасибо что рассказал!
Road Rings
1 Kremlin ring (not actual name but just set of one way roads about Kremlin ),
2 Boulevar Ring
3 Garden Ring,
4 Third ring
5 MKAD
6 CKAD / A107
7 A108
Rail rings
1 Circular line (underground)
2 TCK (overground)
3 Big circular line (underground)
3 Moscow rail circle (overground)
Same as Valencia, Spain.
Thrissur, my city in Kerala, India is an ancient circular city. There is a large park and a temple in the middle. The old castle, court buildings, treasury, important buildings were along the inner most circle.
Hey, I checked Thrissur on Google maps, but it doesn't look circular!? www.google.com/maps/place/Thrissur,+Kerala/@10.5112901,76.2197329,13z/
I often think about the concept of hexagonal city planning.
Hexagon is the bestagon
The problem with hexagons is that a straight path turns into a series of back and forths
@@birdrocketactually that's not a problem. Those back and forth s are laid in 120° rather than 90° so curves are a lot more gentle. Also, it regulates speed, overly straight paths are more dangerous than they are convenient. Hexagonal grids also only allow for 3 way intersections which, because of the angles and the reduced conflict points, are markedly safer than an equivalent 4 way.
@@sabikikasuko6636 if you’re designing for cars, sure. But cities are the dominion of pedestrians, and intentionally making the route longer than it needs to be harms walkability
@@birdrocketit's a bit of a wash, cuz some trips will be shorter some will be longer. Fewer straight lines, but you're also cutting diagonals.
Also in a well designed city that is PLEASANT to walk in, the extra 2 min of walking could be desirable to residents .
I find it a weird coincidence that this video about circle cities came up right after the new Pokémon video game was announced yesterday that featured an iconic circle city in one of its games.
Algorithmically designed coincidence perhaps?
Exactly what I thought
I think he had insider knowledge, he's hinting it with that pidove on the shelf
exactly what i was thinking. ig lumiose is a well designed city
This video was out about a week ago on Nebula. Is that a coincidence?
I think you have lost a really good opportunity to talk about Moscow. It's clearly very circular. Roads are actually called "first circle", "second circle".... Also there are a lot of radial roads. And if you look at the metro map, the roundness of cit becomes even clearer.
Yup I was about to say it, and found your comment
Nah Beijing not only is more circular but the main CBDs are around the ring roads and ring subway lines.
I also thought about this, and it is true, but as a Moscow dweller I'd say that Moscow is closer to being an organic city that evolved around the kremlin and its difference from the examples given is that it is not circular deliberately, though it still is
Walt's original concept for EPCOT was also supposed to be a utopian circular city inspired by Howard, but of course after Walt's death, this concept was shelved and turned into a theme park. Not a circular city but a city that takes its design from circular cities is La Plata in Argentina. After La Plata was designated the provincial capital of Buenos Aires Province, urban planner Pedro Benoit was hired to design it, who designed a city layout based on a rationalist conception of urban centers. The city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north to south and east to west. In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonal streets. This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. For every six blocks, there is a small park or square.
Other than the diagonal streets, all streets are on a rectangular grid and are numbered consecutively. Thus, La Plata is nicknamed "la ciudad de las diagonales" (city of diagonals), as well as being called "la ciudad de los tilos" (or city of linden trees), because of the large number of linden trees lining the many streets and squares. The designs for the government buildings were chosen in an international architectural competition. Thus, the Governor Palace was designed by Italians, the City Hall by Germans, etc. Electric street lighting was installed in 1884 and was the first of its kind in Latin America.
Came here to say this. If you search for the Florida Epcot film, you can see a very interesting video about the proposal and the last video to feature Walt before he died.
Avery! It's been so long since I've seen one of your comments but I guess our interests must be converging again
Corona resident here, born and raised. There's a very good reason for our large circle road (now called Grand Blvd). It was originally a race track. Corona had the largest (or one of the largest) prizes for car races outside Indianapolis back in the early 1900's. As the city grew, the race track was moved north east. I remember going there to see a couple races there. But they were more demolition derby type races.
The nickname for our town is "The Circle City". or 'Crown Town' 👑 if you're OG like that.
Keep up the great work. Love your videos.
Had some jerk from ojt of town ask me for directions, I told him get in grand and take it till the end then make a right😂
The problem with the racetrack was that it trapped people inside the city. Me and my friend won $25 back in the day for a history day project on this. After the librarians let us scour the library for hours they finally showed us everything that was stashed in a little room between the upper and lower levels of the library ( remember the good old library scandal, way over budget, lost over half the books... so sad whats happened to corona, it used to have access to the mountains and smelled like orange blossoms. Or if you were unlucky you smelled the Chino cows....)
this right here! ^^ IE resident, and noticed this when he said "no reason". i was like.... hmmm im pretty sure being near horse town usa has something to do with it
"an inefficient use of land" when you want to sell plots.
If a circle is several miles in diameter, all city blocks outside of the central region can be perfect rectangles, while buildings in the city center tend to be designed from the ground up anyways and can have other shapes
The only reason America went with the grid system which influenced the rest of the world was purely because of the ease of laying out new plots for sale. It's incredibly inefficient for the movement of vehicles and pedestrian traffic though as you need diagonal roads/paths which more circular cities are more suitable for.
Or build buildings
Did you watch the video?
Cause that is, at best, a footnote-level reason.
@@kaneworsnop1007 If you have small block sizes (or a combination of sizes) with plenty of connecting lanes and open spaces for pedestrian access, you can have really efficient grid-based cities - especially good for public transit if you get it right. But America's grids tend to be huge block sizes and the roads are usually quite large and car-only, which is great for selling lots but not efficient long-term. I personally like the Paris style grid combined with a spoke style layout, even if it's not ideal
Milan, Italy is also a pretty circular city, maybe one of the best example of it
It doesn't even remotely resemble a circle, unlike Karlsruhe for example
Milan and the like have simply outgrown their original circle. But you can still see it. Vienna, Prague, smaller cities like Ulm etc. all show that too. However, that's all "most efficient way to build a defensive wall" sorta circular, with no specific street layout inside.
You can still see it in cities that have not outgrown their original city walls, like Nördlingen.
Palmanova comes to mind. Half of the streets are pedestrian-friendly and the whole town is very vibrant and welcoming.
There are many cities like this in Europe.
U should’ve finished the video lol
A more interesting example of a circular design is the borough of Pitman in New Jersey. Located in Gloucester County outside Philadelphia. The borough was named for Rev. Charles Pitman, a Methodist minister. In 1871, land was chosen in both Glassboro and Mantua Township to be set aside for a Methodist summer camp meeting. The New Jersey Conference Camp Meeting Association was officially chartered and given authority over the land grant in 1872, and began planning the campground and organizing meetings. It was chosen to have an auditorium located on a central meeting ground, and twelve avenues originated from the central area as spokes on a wheel, with each of these avenues being a walkway, today still not used for cars.
This area became known as the Pitman Grove, and while worshipers' tents originally lined each of the twelve avenues, cottages slowly replaced the tents and formed the foundation of the town of Pitman. By the 1880s, the number of cottages increased to 400 and residents had begun staying year-round, both of which led to the establishment of the first public school in 1884. The Grove directors resisted the secularization of the Methodist retreat but in 1904, Grove residents voted 122 to 35 for incorporation as an autonomous borough. In 1905, Governor of New Jersey Edward C. Stokes signed a law granting the incorporation. Until 2014, Pitman was a dry town!
I live near Pitman. Nice little town next to a major college town. My great-grandmother lived in one of those cottages at the Grove.
0:48 spreadsheet looking ahh city
dang, no mention of Black Rock City? circles everywhere! I love how easy it is to navigate there, although blocks get pretty long on the outer streets. Great video though, I'm really diggin the circle and hexagon ideas.
Here in Mexico, we have a city called "Delicias" in the state of Chihuahua, pretty circular or oval ish
I'm surprised Canberra wasn't mentioned.
Yes the inner south (around Parliament House) took this idea further than pretty much any other 20th century city. The inner north is fairly standard grid, and the rest is typical feeder road/loops + cul de sac suburbia.
same
Yeah, particularly @ 3:40, as a modern comparison to the round city of Baghdad.
Both examples putting a major landmark in the centre of a circle to identify its prominence.
Canberra Represent!
ninja'd
Shoutout to Lumiose City in Kalos, truly the circular city of all time 😂! Another example of a circular garden city design is Canberra! Roads named for each of Australia's state capitals converge at Capital Circle or State Circle. When Walter Burley Griffin planned Canberra, it was originally envisaged there would be a number of circular concentric roads around Capital Hill, but only Capital Circle and State Circle were ever fully completed. Capital Hill is part of the National Triangle, connecting with City Hill and Russell Hill, representing the civilian and defence parts of Canberra respectively. In the middle of Constitution Ave is the Anzac Parade leading to the Australian War Memorial, built on Mount Ainslie, done on purpose so one could see it across the lake from Capital Hill!
The reason Rotonda West in Florida is circular has an interesting story. The land on which Rotonda sits was owned originally by brothers William Henry Vanderbilt VIII and Alfred Vanderbilt. William was a former Governor of Rhode Island from 1939 to 1941. The brothers acquired the Rotonda land in 1952 where they raised cattle. Eventually, it was sold to Cavanagh Leasing Corporation of Miami in 1969 when ranching became uneconomical. Its development began in 1970. The layout of Rotonda West precisely mimics the temporary World War II airfields that were set up in Florida, laid out like a wagon wheel. The choice of the airfield layout gives it a flavor of Florida history, however there was no airfield at this location prior to development. The CEO Joe Klein liked the idea of a round community, he said, “If we built it square, fewer would have come here. Rounder is softer and more romantic.”
In case of a glaciation, you can always put a big ass generator right in the middle of a circular city, to minimize heat losses.
I'd be down for it just so long as the city doesn't serve soup.
I hate soup.
What about gigant, coal-powere robots doing precision surgery? I bet nothing could go wrong...
You can also put some peripheral or satellite generators if you need heat losses to be minimal
The one bit I'm kinda surprised wasn't mentioned in this video (though it may have been out of scope) was Walt Disney's vision for Epcot. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a circular city inspired by Ebenezer Howard and not a theme park. It never happened since he was unable to get funding for this project.
Actually, he sadly just died before it could be built. The plan was always to start with the theme park district and expand out from there and it's the reason WDW had its on improvement district until recently and built the town of celebration eventually having previously committed to building places for people to live in the original proposal. The people mover and monorail were designed to work in this city model and not to be attractions at the theme park. That was just a convenient testing ground.
Me, who lived in Moscow most of my life, was extremely confused when I figured out that most cities are not circle shape. It was just so intuitive for me. I am absolutely lost when I visit any grid city
What makes thing more mad, that towns surrounded Moscow connected in circles two, multiple times!
Cities with tons of circles are awful. I used to do deliveries in DC years ago, and it makes traffic a nightmare and the buildings with weird shapes have a ton of wasted spaces because they are often too narrow to use or don't fit furniture, or if you have a triangular corner of windows the heat in summer is unbearable and it's freezing in winter especially since the buildings are old and poorly insulated. The idea was complete garbage and the reason it was done was to imitate Paris and to allow Cannons to shoot down roads as a defensive maneuver in case of war, but it was obsolete before the city got built because of artillery improvements. So it's a mess for no reason really.
I can’t believe you made a video about circular cities without mentioning Canberra, Australia!
Exactly. None of the cities mentioned had anything like the number of circles Canberra has. Canberra is the city that will literally have you going round and round in circles.
Karlsruhe is a good example of an 18th century planned circular city
Charlottenburg in Romania is a very good example for a circular village fro the 18th century planned around the main administrative buildings like the church, school, primary house etc.
There's Moscow with three main ring roads (many more arcs) and a radial design for the main avenues and highways. Also, there are three ring rail lines (two of them are metro lines, and the third is a surface line with suburban-model trains)
Moscow is circle technically
The fact that this came out right after Pokemon Legends ZA was announced, which is going to take place entirely within a circular city, is honestly pretty funny
BlackRockCity. It is constructed, new, every year, and is circular with spokes. I believe it's heavily inspired by ideal urban planning ideals.
Moscow, duh.
I recall that there is a circular city called "Tekesi Bagua City" still functioning today in the Xinjiang region of China, which was constructed in the 1930s by the local ROC military commander.
"Bagua city" is a city with octagon ring roads
I was expecting you to mention Australian capital, Canberra especially talking about Garden city movement - I would say that is a good example of a circle city
9:01 I would say the only thing correct abou this is the rich housing being mainly concentrated on one road that goes from the City/Town centre outwards to the countryside, it is amazing how common/almost universal this feature is, as soon as you get above a population of about 10,000
You should check Santa Cruz de la Sierra, it is the largest city in Bolivia and it is organized just that way, the entire city is circular and there are up to 9 rings that are literally called literally "anillos" ("rings" in Spanish) and each main avenue is a radius of the circle, even some avenue is called "radial" ("raidal" in Spanish) and in the center of the entire city, within the first ring is the main plaza and the cathedral of the city that was built at its foundation. It is very intuitive to locate yourself just by knowing the nearest avenue (radius) and the ring you are on, like: I'm in the Av. Cristo Redentor between the Second and the Third ring.
4:32 that Beijing metro map,is already many years old. There are already way more lines and extensions.
0:49 this very specific information is oddly satisfying. Knowing that the circleville squaring company has existed, with the sole purpose of squaring the circle of circleville... Sounds like a dr Seuss like story.
it is technically not near me as I live in NZ, but Canberra has 2 circles next to each other.
Yes
Most cities in Europe are circular on a slightly larger level, and instead of one massive interchange in the middle, that is where a car free shopping zone usually is. It's not usually entirely neat, but the concepts remain the same, whether you put a few bumps in the circle to adapt to hills, rivers and bigger buildings, or you make it geometricly perfect.
Square grid is by far the worst layout, as you are constantly on a potentially major crossing, if they are all the same. Don't get me wrong, we still have them, even the strong grid ones, mostly build in the baroque. Everyone I've lived in was annoying and slow to drive in. But more likely you will have more rectangular grid shaped smaller areas, but more circular structures on a large level to facilitate the major routes. That and roundabouts of course, which the US for some reason doesn't seem to understand.
Cul-de-sac like structures are more common in less dense parts of the city, while the most dense will also feature limitations for cars and lots of paths for bikes and walking only, not cars, that may effectively work a bit more like that, than grids.
I love this channel, I've followed your work since the beginning and I'm a big admirer. but I am saddened by the absence of cities from South America or Africa in your approach.
La Plata in Argentina is not a circle, but a grid with crisscrossing diagonals. It has a lot of the advantages of a circular city, but I think a bit more practical
Delicias, Chihuahua, Mexico has a circle road but its a grid on the inside....
Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil has more of the radial set up but it's only a half circle
No mention of the Auravana Project or the Venus Project, both of whom are working on circular layouts.
Nor Burning Man Project
It's a temporary city, but the layout of the annual Burning Man festival in the desert north of Reno, Nevada, very much has a circular concept.
The iconic multi-storey Man figure is at the center, surrounded by open space for a variety of art installations, then rings of lots for people to set up their tents/RVs/what-have-you. The streets follow a grid-like logic with the "spokes" having clock names (12, 9, 6, 4 o'clock and so on) while the ring roads emanating outward follow the alphabet based on that year's artistic theme (recently it was Animalia, so the streets had names like Aardvark, Bee, Cat, Dog, Elephant, Frog, etc). It's easy to give people location information, i.e. "I'm camping near 7:30 & Fern" or "There is an amazing Trojan Horse you can climb into on the Playa at 3!".
There are service centers at logical places where you can buy ice or get medical attention.
Roughly 80,000 people live in Black Rock City over the week, largely biking from one spot to the other to experience artworks, dances, musical performances or other happenings. Then after the event wraps they all scatter back to their homes and a largely volunteer crew cleans up the dry lakebed as much as possible to return again next year. Amusingly, the circular road patterns remain after all of the structures have been removed.
It's all fun and games until someone gives you an address on Rod's Road.
I've been saying to international students lost here in my home city that it is just a bunch of wonky concentric cirlces For a while. Enschede, with 162k inhabitants, is the 16th most populous Dutch municipality and the largest city in an international urban agglomoration of over 400k. The "old town' city centre is a ringed by road and from it radiates outwards eight main roads, which are intersected by a large ringroad (the "Singel", named after dutch canals that circle towns which did exist here around the old medieval town) and further out by a partial ring road (the "round way") that doesn't quite connect in the north. This came to be after the loss of the Southern Netherlands and the textile industry relocating to this small medieval town. Enschede grew rapidly from a small medieval town(ship) to the Manchester of the Netherlands. It rapidly expanded post-war again, and is still currently expanading at a slower rate. It is surrounded by ring of greenery, from high heather, moors, forests and the famed bocage landscape (meadows and fields fenced of with thin bands of forest). The city sits on the western flank of a
Five main rail roads radiated outward too, 2 of which converted to main road ways and one to a main tram line, later main bus/bike road. A number of car roads converted to bike roads radiate to the suburbs and beyond too (the city is one of the most spread out in area cities of the netherlands). A bike highway to the next city over is being build currently next to one the existing railroads, while soon the other existing railroad to germany will be moved underground (and electrified and doubled in tracks) Unfortunatly we have probably permanently lost the Enschede tramlines.
The city deindustrilised rapidly, partly with the thorough help of Allied bombers (who thought they were over Nazi Germany as they navigated by the night-lights of the cities) and most massive factory complexes are gone now, but the radial pattern and circular road still influence the fabric of the city. The city, even tho marketing as The Bicycle City of the Netherlands, is massivly car, especially as it is a shopping haven and tourist destination to a large densily populated german hinterland. The rebuilding of th ecity happened also during the car craze. As such which was for a while the largest underground parking facility in western europe existed underneath the eastern part of the city center. To alliviate the car congestion around the city center nowadays, some parts of the inner most ring road have been partially made porous to bycicles but not cars, and converted to roads that favour the cyclists over motorised vehicles. The current mission of the municipality's infrastructure board is to redirect as much motorised trafic that until recently could and would go through the inner ring road over to the second ring road.
Even the large Twente canal, during the 1930s dug accross a fifth of the width of Netherlands terminating in this city, neatly conforms to the radiating pattern. Enschede isn't like the other dutch cities of water, without a large body of water, but it never the less is: it is a city of springs where numerous small streams originate as it sits on a hill ridge ontop of elevations comparable to the German side over the Dutch side. Ground water from Germany first rises and than drops further, resulting in many creeks flowing through the rather poorly fertile sand soils of the hill ridge. To compansate the poor quality of the soil, the landscape is dotted with constructed hills made by layering organic material from the heather and moors uphill and the heaps from the marches at the rivervalley, a so called 'es' or 'esch' the tallest in the world of which at the south of Enschede
Hexagons are superiors. 3 way intersections, more efficient use of land than circles, repeating geometric pattern. in dense zoning you can put large buildings. in less dense areas you can put cul du sacs in side them.
Yes, but are the advantages worth having triangular or parallelogram shaped plots, making buildings more expensive and inconveniently shaped?
The centre of Amsterdam is a half-circle and it's really conveniënt since everything feels closeby. I love living here. You should check it out!
The center of Annapolis Maryland is a circle hub and when I filmed there last year I found it so frustrating to say the least. Its one of the few cities that didn’t adopt the Manhattan\Philly grid layout and makes for such a clumsy way of moving around.
Australia's capital, Canberra, has its centre based around 2 sets of concentric circle with radial spokes on opposite sides of a river. It's also very much a planned city.
Personally I think organic growth is what makes a city beautiful. Geometric shapes give me the impression of a dystopia, cold and clinical.
When i was a geography undergrad, we were introduced to "Central Place Theory" by Walter Christaller. This German planner developed it in the 1920s, and it was not adopted for urban use, but it was for rural and agriculture.
Hexagons. Let's make it happen.
I think citys need all three designs - spaghetti, square and circle depending on their function.
Circle for large ring roads/highways and underground transport for quick public transport around the city.
Square (in a grid or large up to 1km) to section the city allowing movement with car/busses on the outskirt of the square
Spaghetti within the square for efficient movement for people walking/cycling
Wow. This comes out just after watching the preview for Pokémon Legends Z-A. Wild timing.
The coolest circle city we never had was Walt Disney's original vision for EPCOT, which was supposed to be "The City of Tomorrow"
His original pitch for the concept is still on UA-cam and its incredibly fascinating.
Sadly, before construction could really start, Walt passed away and the company decided to turn EPCOT into another theme park instead of an Urban Planning Project.
Delicias, Chihuahua is a circular city
Here in Brazil, the main one is Feira de Santana, in the state of Bahia. The outer circle was created to divert heavy traffic away from inside the city because Feira de Santana is located at the conjunction of several federal highways.
I'm not so much a fan of pure rational city design. There are several reasons why people enjoy being in European medieval city centers way more than modern city centers but one is for sure that it's irregular. Much repetition really sucks, especially when you go/drive there every day. It feels super unnatural. I mean a circle city is still better than a grid city but I think city should look more like "organisms" than machines. Reading Camillo Sitte is very inspiring for that (it's for free online).
Norwich, England is a city built around 3 circles. It’s three rings, the inner ring road (which follows the route of the medieval city wall), the outer ring road (developed after the war) and the A47 and NDR (developed in recent years) all circulate around the centre point of the city, the castle. It’s actually a very easy city to navigate and get around because of its clock like system. Although it has developed quite organically it is a pretty good example of a circular city.
I remember a circular city was my design for a perfect city when playing city skylines as a kid. I’m very curious what this video has to say!
I did the same thing. Then I realized It has become a grid with curves which the game can't handle without leaving unzoned spaces everywhere.
Hexagon is the best
Creating an entire video about Circular Cities and not even mentioning Moscow. What a great job!
Look up Nahalal, a village in Israel shaped as a circle in light of Socialism.
Every house in equally close to the center of the village, and has the same excess to agricultural lands.
The problem was the village can't really grow.
So a New model was formed, with half circles arranged in a row with the main road connection them. Best example is in the close by village of Kfar Yehoshua
As someone who has traveled around the world, I have been in several circular city. The big problem is traffic. All roads in these cities go through the city center causing huge traffic problems. Ring roads were never thought of when old circular cities were built.
Canberra, the capital of Australia, has a cool big circle and a hexagon. The parliament house is in the middle of the circle and lines up nicely with the hexagon and the Australian war memorial. it is an entirely planned city.
My hometown of Lexington, KY has radial “spokes” coming out from the center of the city and two circular local highways that go around connecting the spokes. These highways are “New Circle Rd.” And Man O War Rd.
Corona California actually has the "nickname" of "Circle City".. like you said because of the circular Grand Boulevard, also wonder if it is not because of its name. Corona meaning Crown in Spanish.
It's just a circle road, the rest is square, but it is mentioned in the video at the start (at 1:30).
Yes, they should. Just because an old city that was circular didn't work, doesn't mean current and future cities shouldn't be. This old city didn't have subway and trains. Circular cities are the most efficient because is makes transportation vie electric trains the most efficient and easiest to automate. Also sewage and electric line work better in it.
I live in Rotonda West, The center was originally planned as a commercial hub, but it took so long to build out the residential areas that it never really came to fruition. Now there's a park, RV & Boat storage, and water supply tank in the center. There is still commercial zoned land in the center, and who knows someday there may be some shops and restaurants in the center.
I've seen it from the air when I fly to RSW to visit family. It looks pretty ridiculous, but it's Florida. i have very low expectations there.
Great video.
In fact, in 2003 I attended the world scout jamboree in Thailand. A gathering of 20'000 scouts from all over the world. To accomodate all of us, a camp site has been built and it was shaped as... (no surprise) two circles. Every circle had a supermarket and a common area in the center. Then, the rest was divided into sub-camps (like cloves). Starting from the center to the outside in a typical sub-camp: Sub-camp main entry, commodities and offices, showers, a stage for sub camp activities, the actual camp ground for tents and then garbage collection area at the very outer side (so that the garbage collecting trucks, and other utilities trucks, just had to travel along the outer circular road).
The two circles were connected by a main road, cutting both circles in half and, in the space between the circles, there were other areas dedicated to specific activities. It all felt very organized and easy to navigate.
Today, the area (12.611033271004988, 100.94039303914639) has been reconverted for military purposes, but on satellite imagery it is still possible to see the two concentric circles with the road connecting the two circles.
I visited Palmanova, in Italy last year. Beautiful place and an incredible design. The central square (or hexagon) is stunning
Canberra, the Capital of Australia, was planned as a circular city. Newer suburbs of the city however are designed along conventional patterns.
I remember an old Lego City floor plastic mat or foundations if you will which you built your Lego City upon, but unlike Legos there should be a foundation mat with every possible mixing so fits different geography shapes, to build upon.
Rotonda West was supposed to be accompanied by a Rotonda East in Martin County, Florida (opposite side of the peninsula). In fact, the latter was planned first, in the late 1960s, but the location faced too much opposition and never broke ground.
In both cases, the circular design - motto: "City In The Round" - was the entire gimmick.
There are settlements that have to be circles.
E.g. a Kibbutz
usually these places were built close to the border and were subject of attacks.
The middle circle is always the most sensitive part of the Kibbutz.
Schools, kindergartens and nurseries are aways in the most protected location, then the houses, the industries, the fence and then the fields.
Corona, AKA "Circle City," has its circle because it used to host a racetrack. They didn't just decide to build a circular road through town to be quirky.
Amsterdam has a semi-circle structure. And there were at least three reasons to made it like that:
1 transportation (which went by water at the time)
2 defense (the fortification was easiest done in a circular structure)
3 it connected to an easy way to cultivate the swampy landscape
I think you should not build a city circular only because they are nice, but it needs a function to remain that way.
Beijing's ring road system was built where the outer wall and the inner wall around the city were demolished by the CPP, because natural right of way. There was an inner inner wall but that was around the Forbidden City palace complex at the very centre of the middle kingdom.
I wish you would have discussed or at least mentioned Walt Disney's proposed Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow which was inspired by Howard's Garden City concept.
I scrolled way too much to find this comment.
I the case of rotonda florida it makes absolutely no sense. Nightmare driving thru there
I'm surprised Detroit wasn't mentioned as its much larger than some of the other examples here. In the early 1800s, most of the town burned down in a fire. When it was rebuilt, they went with a "wheel and spoke" design, like a circle city. Some of this has been changed in the years since, but if you look at a map of downtown now you can still see part of that radial city design even now. The center focused on parks and theaters.
I think Copenhagen is a city that could be studied well for these kind of circular patterns. The city was originally just any old organically growing medieval city behind a moat and berm, however in the 1860's permission from the national government was finally made to allow permanent construction outside of the moat and development pace skyrocketed. Copenhagen developed along radial roads in every direction allowed (mostly because around 60% is taken up by the sea and a coastline) with warped grids in a circular-ish pattern going out from the downtown as the standard.
Then in 1947 as Copenhagen was starting to sprawl, the famous Copenhagen Fingerplan was published and put into motion. It was focused around shaping Copenhagen like a hand, with the palm being the city centre with the office jobs, primary commercial activity, and factories primarily centered there, together with 5 "fingers" of dense developments going out in radial directions with electric suburban trains at the centre. All of this with every finger being separated from one another by natural greenspace, farms, and potentially motorways away from peoples homes.
However this of course didnt pan out so well in practise. By the 1970's High car ownership had become well established in Denmark just like the United States, and the growth of low density single family suburbs spread like wildfire, and with much higher popularity than the suburban apartment complexes that grew out in various sizes and architectural styles throughout the 1920's to 1960's. It fundementally shifted the dynamic of the city with much greater car dependency and more polycentric development, as most expansion in both homes and jobs happened in suburban municipalities at the edges of the traditional fingers.
The fingerplan still stuck around and electric train services continued to get extended, however the city was becoming much more polycentric. Especially as the welfare state began to deindustrialise the country, making the large factories in the downtown area shut down, with most new jobs being in industrial and office parks in the suburbs. Often far from the trains, or alternatively with higher priority for car drivers than pedestrians and buses. As such most commute patterns since then have been nowhere near as radial as the Fingerplan had envisioned but a seemingly endless cluster of random point A to point B across this now incredibly polycentric metropolis. And because of a lack of orbital rapid transit connections in the suburbs for decades, the bulk of trips have been done by car traffic and given the city some serious car dependency issues.
The fingerplan is however still in use to this day and regularly updated to keep with the times. And the orbital rapid transit issue is already being fixed thankfully. Parallel to the busy orbital highway Motorringway 3, and running directly on Ringway 3 is a brand new Light Rail line, the first in the city, wrapping around the city along its busiest suburban corridor. The line isnt finished but has a target completion date of 2025. Additionally BRT lines are being studied for 2 other ring roads in the city to provide more orbital services, and more rapid transit to key areas like office parks, shopping malls, industrial parks, and major hospitals and universities.
In this sense Copenhagen has gone from an organic city, to a circular city, to a radial city with many corridors, and is now going back to a circular one
Interesting history, thanks. But "welfare states" don't cause de-industrialization. Increasing labor efficiency of industry, plus off-shoring, does.
Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia is a city based on a plan that was made around circles or rings. It looks a lot like the garden city and had an actual interesting plan and its beginnings in the 60s but with urban development and growth as fast as it has been found in this city. It has sprawled around very much and the circles are still there, but traffic and other problems that you can find in cities in developing countries. Maybe if there was any form of better transport system, or reworked development plan, it would work, but in how politics and peoples minds work, it will never be a good solution, and as you say not any kind of form. Each city should be specially designed for the specific context.
North Charleston, SC has a circle (Park Circle) in the center of the old downtown, and 8 streets radiating off it, and more modernly, a concentric elliptical section around Liberty Park. The Park Circle area is said to have been inspired by Ebenezer Howard's book.
An interesting example of this is the Town of Mount Royal (TMR) in Montreal. Originally a suburb of Montreal it was designed to support the new rail line that was cut under Mount Royale (Montreal) to the downtown.
I'm so happy seeing Corona, CA getting mentioned in the vid
As a European I must admit my brain fails to comprehend this Usonian upside down thinking of “bad poor centre” vs “good rich suburbs”. 🤔 Like the Burgess’s model at 7:43, presenting an idealised urban structure. What city council would in their right mind allow for factories to eat up the valuable space at the city centre? 😅 Thus you get ugly, empty, uninviting downtown, push everyone to the outskirts and force them to endure long and costly commutes. It seems less of a model and more of a diagnosis. 😬
Notice how the centre includes areas labelled "ghetto" and "slum". By design?
Although not a perfect circle, Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, was roughly designed as a circle in its layout with its main streets like spokes on a bicycle wheel.
On the macro scale, Burgess describes cities in circles. But on the micro (streets and buildings) it’s going to be easier to build linear to fit infrastructure.
The primary issue I have with circular cities, like any other non-grid city, is the intersections. With a grid, one can easily look left and right when approaching an intersection to make sure it is clear and safe to cross. The further one deviates from those 90 degree intersections, the more difficult it is to make that crucial check. Of course, the issue is mitigated by having fewer automobiles on the roads, but emergency service vehicles, buses, and delivery vehicles still need roads to access the city, and thus will naturally need access to areas where pedestrians and other vehicles exist, so the problem doesn't go away.
Can’t forget about one of the other most famous circular city designs, the originally E.P.C.O.T. was going to be a circular city instead of a theme park with multiple “floors” to it.
I’d be curious to learn more about if radial cities actually reduce traffic. Living in Chicago, it seems terrible with all of the major points of interest in the middle as opposed to a true grid city where the public transit followed the grid shape
Jumeirah Village Circle is a 870 hectare development in Dubai which is composed of six districts with parks as radiating spokes in most of those districts. All the parks converge on a small central park that is surrounded by a neighborhood of villas. The major issue with the neighborhood is getting into and out of the circle via the surrounding freeways. If you are on a freeway going counterclockwise, you need to go several miles out of your way to do a U-turn or go through a congested freeway interchange to be on the inside ring of the freeway with entrances to the development. Since there are only four freeway access points in the development, these streets can become heavily congested during peak hours. When the village is fully built out, I expect these problems to worsen.
You should take a look at Cologne, Germany…
It’s not a perfect circle, but orientated with ring roads and a green belt intersecting throughout the city
My ideal city design would be malls! The first floor is all stores that are open 24 hours. In addition to entertainment, they also have a grocery store and other necessities anyone can access like a police/fire department, doctors offices, hotels etc. The upper floors can only be accessed by people who live there and include apartments and services like schools, private green spaces for residents only, etc. Then below the first floor is a mass transit system, with some taking people to the nearest malls and others to far more distant malls. To go to work people could simply walk downstairs. To grocery shop, you take your personal shopping cart downstairs. No need for any transit other than the rails that connect the various malls. There would also be factories that surround malls, but also the malls surround factories. They all connect for people who work there. You could work at a much farther away place but would have a lot of stops at other factories or malls along the way if you take the mass transit system.
i know a lot of circular cities, with a circle and a star like infrastructure
berlin, paris, london, moskow
switch the map view to below street level and you will find
moskow even has 3 loops
we got a thing here, called public transport
Hasselt, Belgium.
I love that city. it's so green and calm.
1- Nequsia of Cyprua
2- Vienna of Austria
3- Old Baghdad of Iraq
4- Khartoum of Sudan (2 or 3 circles).
There are even more, but I remember thess capitals.
J.H. Crawford's Carfree Cities is hands-down the best plan for modern cities. Circular districts in a clover arrangement.
In 1947 Copenhagen decided on the "5-finger plan".
As the town is on the coast, it's a semicircle, with 5 main roads and 5 rail linies radiating out from the city center.
The latest infrastructure is the metro, which has a "circular" line
I live near Rotonda West in Florida. It has an interesting history. It was designed after Atlantis, a ring city. It has ringed canals that the developers said would be opened up to a waterway so residents would have boats to go to the Gulf of Mexico. The government said no you can’t connect to the waterway, before the project began. They built it anyway and it went bankrupt. To be fair the area has several other planed communities that all went bankrupt in the seventies. Those communities are now thriving.
park circle in north charleston *sort of* fits the criteria:
its a giant roundabout with 8 streets radiating out from it. recently, they put a huge playground and a community center there! very neat place