IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/urbpla/v8y2023i3p172-184.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Grid Is Not a Tree: Toward a Reconciliation of Alexander’s and Martin’s Views of City Form

Author

Listed:
  • Ngoc Hong Nguyen

    (Faculty of Architecture, The University of Danang – University of Science and Technology, Vietnam)

  • Khaled Alawadi

    (Civil Infrastructure and Environmental Engineering, Khalifa University, UAE)

  • Sara Al Hinai

    (Civil Infrastructure and Environmental Engineering, Khalifa University, UAE)

Abstract

Christopher Alexander famously declared that “a city is not a tree,” while Leslie Martin declared that “the grid is [a] generator.” This article investigates how Alexander’s call for overlap, adaptability, and order can indeed be manifested in grid networks, as Martin claimed. Order has been measured using the entropy of street orientation, while adaptability has been denoted by the streets’ betweenness values. Through the analysis of Abu Dhabi’s neighborhoods and global urban areas, the study reveals that overlap, order, and adaptability can coexist in gridded street network. A fine-grain scale of the grid plays a critical role in supporting the quality of urban space. To foster adaptation, planning policies should focus on adaptability providing room for informal and spontaneous growth. We conclude by noting that this approach represents a reconciliation between Christopher Alexander’s views and those of Leslie Martin.

Suggested Citation

  • Ngoc Hong Nguyen & Khaled Alawadi & Sara Al Hinai, 2023. "A Grid Is Not a Tree: Toward a Reconciliation of Alexander’s and Martin’s Views of City Form," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 172-184.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v8:y:2023:i:3:p:172-184
    DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i3.6291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/6291
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/up.v8i3.6291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "OSMnx: A Python package to work with graph-theoretic OpenStreetMap street networks," SocArXiv fe4ra, Center for Open Science.
    2. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "OSMnx: A Python package to work with graph-theoretic OpenStreetMap street networks," SocArXiv fe4ra_v1, Center for Open Science.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael W. Mehaffy & Tigran Haas, 2023. "Introduction: Toward a “Post-Alexandrian” Agenda," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 148-152.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "Methods and Measures for Analyzing Complex Street Networks and Urban Form," SocArXiv 93h82_v1, Center for Open Science.
    2. Lindsay Poirier & Dexter Antonio & Makenna Dettmann & Tiffany Eng & Jennifer Ganata & Sujoy Ghosh & Mirthala Lopez & Ranesh Karma & Asiya Natekal & Catherine Brinkley, 2024. "Making plans findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable with data infrastructure: A search engine for constructing, analyzing, and visualizing planning documents," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 51(8), pages 1913-1930, October.
    3. Ngoc Hong Nguyen & Khaled Alawadi & Sara Al Hinai, 2023. "A Grid Is Not a Tree: Toward a Reconciliation of Alexander’s and Martin’s Views of City Form," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 172-184.
    4. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "Methods and Measures for Analyzing Complex Street Networks and Urban Form," SocArXiv 93h82, Center for Open Science.
    5. Dokka, Trivikram & SenGupta, Sonali & Bhardwaj, Aaditya, 2022. "Public EV charging infrastructure - why charging behaviours matter for placement, ownership and operations?," QBS Working Paper Series 2022/09, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's Business School.
    6. Winston Yap & Jiat-Hwee Chang & Filip Biljecki, 2023. "Incorporating networks in semantic understanding of streetscapes: Contextualising active mobility decisions," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(6), pages 1416-1437, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v8:y:2023:i:3:p:172-184. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.