Bear Up North
Cyburbian Emeritus
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This Bear is not a planner. However, I get the feeling that many planners enjoy looking at, reading, poring-over.....maps. Some of that is due to your profession; you have to to do your job. But....how many of you just read 'em for fun?
This Bear does.
Big collection of DeLorme state maps....("Be the first kid on your block to collect them all!").
Something I have noticed.....I can pick out the high-growth areas and make (what I believe to be) very reasonable guesstimates on sprawl locations.
Take California or Colorado, for example.
Looking at the detailed maps of cities and towns you immediately notice the outlying areas with nothing but curvy roads and cul-de-sacs, even with flat terrain. Pretty easy to guess the growth area. But if you look toward city centers you see the "old" method of road planning.....grids, grids, grids.
Cities that have grids and very few of the curvy roads are not growing.
In the California and Colorado examples you see a lot of growth. Then, pull out the Ohio or Michigan map book. A place like Toledo still has a small share of those curvy puppies......but when I say small share.....I mean SMALL share.
Then, it's pretty easy to guess the sprawl roads......most often adjacent to a boatload of the curvy guys, adjacent to an expressway interchange, adjacent to another major crossroad.
You can almost see the top of the Wal-Mart.....
Bear Reading Them Maps Again
This Bear does.
Big collection of DeLorme state maps....("Be the first kid on your block to collect them all!").
Something I have noticed.....I can pick out the high-growth areas and make (what I believe to be) very reasonable guesstimates on sprawl locations.
Take California or Colorado, for example.
Looking at the detailed maps of cities and towns you immediately notice the outlying areas with nothing but curvy roads and cul-de-sacs, even with flat terrain. Pretty easy to guess the growth area. But if you look toward city centers you see the "old" method of road planning.....grids, grids, grids.
Cities that have grids and very few of the curvy roads are not growing.
In the California and Colorado examples you see a lot of growth. Then, pull out the Ohio or Michigan map book. A place like Toledo still has a small share of those curvy puppies......but when I say small share.....I mean SMALL share.
Then, it's pretty easy to guess the sprawl roads......most often adjacent to a boatload of the curvy guys, adjacent to an expressway interchange, adjacent to another major crossroad.
You can almost see the top of the Wal-Mart.....
Bear Reading Them Maps Again