A
city block,
urban block or simply
block is a central element of
urban planningUrban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities...
and
urban designUrban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
. A city block is the smallest area that is surrounded by
streetA street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...
s. City blocks are the space for buildings within the street pattern of a city, they form the basic unit of a city's urban fabric. City blocks may be subdivided into any number of smaller
lotsIn real estate, a lot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner. A lot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries...
or
parcelParcel may refer to:* Lot , a piece of land* Fluid parcel, a concept in fluid dynamics* A package, sent through the mail* An object used in the game "Pass the parcel"...
s of land usually in private ownership, though in some cases, it may be other forms of tenure.
A
city block,
urban block or simply
block is a central element of
urban planningUrban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities...
and
urban designUrban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
. A city block is the smallest area that is surrounded by
streetA street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...
s. City blocks are the space for buildings within the street pattern of a city, they form the basic unit of a city's urban fabric. City blocks may be subdivided into any number of smaller
lotsIn real estate, a lot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner. A lot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries...
or
parcelParcel may refer to:* Lot , a piece of land* Fluid parcel, a concept in fluid dynamics* A package, sent through the mail* An object used in the game "Pass the parcel"...
s of land usually in private ownership, though in some cases, it may be other forms of tenure. City blocks are usually built-up to varying degrees and thus form the physical containers or 'streetwalls' of public space. Most cities are composed of a greater or lesser variety of sizes and shapes of urban block. For example, many pre-industrial cores of cities in Europe, Asia and the Middle-east tend to have irregularly shaped street patterns and urban blocks, while cities based on grids have much more regular arrangements.
Grid plan
In most cities of the world that were planned, rather than developing gradually over a long period of time, streets are typically laid out on a
grid planThe grid plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. In the context of the culture of Ancient Greece the grid plan is called Hippodamian plan.-Ancient grid plans:...
, so that city blocks are square or rectangular. Using the perimeter block development principle, city blocks are developed so that
buildingIn architecture, construction, engineering and real estate development the word building may refer to one of the following:# Any man-made structure used or intended for supporting or sheltering any use or continuous occupancy, or...
s are located along the perimeter of the block, with entrances facing the
streetA street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...
, and semi-private
courtyardFor alternative meanings of the word "court", see: Court .A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky...
s in the rear of the buildings. This arrangement is intended to provide good social interaction among people.
Since the spacing of streets in grid plans varies so widely among cities, or even within cities, it is impossible to generalize about the size of a city block. However, as reference points, the
standard block in ManhattanThe Commissioners' Plan of 1811 was a proposal by the New York State Legislature adopted in 1811 for the orderly development and sale of the land of Manhattan between 14th Street and Washington Heights. The plan is arguably the most famous use of the grid plan and is considered by most historians...
is about ; and in some U.S. cities standard blocks are as wide as . While for example, the city blocks in the central city grid of Melbourne, Australia are .
In most areas, cities have grown in a more amorphous manner rather than being planned from the outset. For this reason, an even pattern of square or rectangular city blocks is not so common in European cities. Following the example of Philadelphia, New York City adopted the
Commissioners' Plan of 1811The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 was a proposal by the New York State Legislature adopted in 1811 for the orderly development and sale of the land of Manhattan between 14th Street and Washington Heights. The plan is arguably the most famous use of the grid plan and is considered by most historians...
for a more extensive
grid planThe grid plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. In the context of the culture of Ancient Greece the grid plan is called Hippodamian plan.-Ancient grid plans:...
. In much of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the
addressing systemsAn address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used for describing the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along with other identifiers such as house or...
follow a block and lot number system, in which each block of a street is allotted 100 building numbers.
Superblock
Superblocks were popular during the early and mid-20th century, arising from
modernistModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...
ideas in architecture and urban planning. A superblock is much larger than a traditional city block, with greater setback for buildings, and is typically bounded by widely spaced, high-speed, arterial or circulating routes rather than by local streets. Superblocks are generally associated with
suburbSuburbs are defined in various different ways around the world. They can be the residential areas of a large city, or separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city. Some suburbs have a degree of political autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city...
s,
planned citiesA new town, planned community or planned city is a city, town, or community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion.Navi Mumbai, a planned city near Indian city...
, and the
urban renewalUrban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of reconstruction...
of the mid-20th century; that is, in areas in which a
street hierarchyThe street hierarchy is an urban design technique for separating automobile through-traffic from developed areas. It can be seen as a hierarchy of roads that embeds the hierarchy in the network topology...
has replaced the traditional grid. In a residential area of a suburb, the interior of the superblock is typically served by
cul-de-sacA cul-de-sac is a french word for dead end, close, no through road or court meaning dead-end street with only one inlet/outlet...
roads.
Urban planner Clarence Perry argued for use of superblocks and related ideas in his "neighborhood unit" plan, which aimed to organize space in a way that is more
pedestrianA pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In some communities, those traveling using roller skates, skateboards, and similar devices are also considered to be pedestrians. In modern times, the term mostly refers to someone walking on a road or footpath, but this was...
-friendly and provided open
plazaPlaza is a Spanish word related to "field" which describes an open urban public space, such as a city square. All through Spanish America, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three closely related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be...
s and other space for residents to socialize. In the 1930s, superblocks were often used in urban renewal
public housingPublic housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by not-for-profit organizations, or by a combination of...
projects in American cities. In using superblocks, housing projects aimed to eliminate back
alleyAn alley or alleyway is a narrow, pedestrian lane found in urban areas which usually runs between or behind buildings. In older cities and towns in Europe, alleys are often what is left of a medieval street network, or a right of way or ancient footpath in an urban setting. In older urban...
s, which were often associated with
slumA slum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the proportion of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
conditions.
Superblocks are also used when functional units such as rail yards or housing projects are too big to fit in one block.
A well-known example of a superblock is the
World Trade CenterThe World Trade Center was a complex in Lower Manhattan in New York City whose seven buildings were destroyed in 2001 in the September 11 terrorist attacks...
site in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
, where several streets of Manhattan's downtown grid were removed to make room for the center.
The British
new townA new town, planned community or planned city is a city, town, or community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion.Navi Mumbai, a planned city near Indian city...
of
Milton KeynesMilton Keynes , often abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is also the principal town of the Borough of Milton Keynes. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967...
is built around a grid of one-kilometer square superblocks.
Perimeter block
A perimeter block is a type of city block which is built up on all sides surrounding a central space that is semi-private. They are usually between 4 and 7 stories in height, and may contain a mixture of uses, with commercial or retail functions on the ground floor. Perimeter blocks are a key component of many European cities and are an urban form that allows very high
urban densitiesUrban density is a term used in urban planning and urban design to refer to the number of people inhabiting a given urbanized area. As such it is to be distinguished from other measures of population density. Urban density is considered an important factor in understanding how cities function...
to be achieved without high-rise buildings.
See also
- Census block
A census block is the smallest geographic unit used by the United States Census Bureau for tabulation of 100-percent data . Several blocks make up block groups, which again make up census tracts. There are on average about 39 blocks per block group, but there are variations...
- Manhattan distance
- Mixed-use development
Mixed-use development is the practice of allowing more than one type of use in a building or set of buildings. In planning zone terms, this can mean some combination of residential, commercial, industrial, office, institutional, or other land uses....
- Urban design
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
- Urban planning
Urban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities...
- Mile Road System of Metro Detroit Region