How Grid Systems Promote Urbanism and Winding Streets Undermine It

The transpo network, the connectivity, is the first order system applied to a place. The "body," or the physical city of uses and buildings, is the emergent second order network that is entirely dependent upon the degree of connectivity at the order below.

The rigidly hierarchical dendritic pattern is indicative of a flat or spread out "market." No place is really any more or less interconnected than other places (thus why studies like intersection density and space syntax are valuable -- they measure interconnectedness). In cities, the degree to which you are connected to persons, places, and things determines the value of that particular site. The higher the value, the greater the demand, opportunity, and therefore density. Because the hierarchical 1st order system produces little hierarchy in the 2nd order system, it suggests an outward or centrifugal force, or outward pressure, on the real estate market. All places are equitable. Evenly and poorly interconnected. And the result is sprawl. Demand smeared evenly across the entire landscape.

Because the hierarchy inherent in reticulated systems only appears at the next level of complexity and order, it can be said that reticulated grids exert centripetal force on the real estate market or convergent. There is greater value at intersections and hubs of networks because they are more interconnected. How we value the availability and amount of the possible interconnections between people, places, and things drives city form by driving demand, and in turn density -- inward.