City block
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
- For other uses of this term, see city block (disambiguation).
A city block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city block is the smallest area that is surrounded by streets.
In many areas of the world, streets are traditionally laid out on a grid plan, so that city blocks are square or rectangular. Because 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 such city blocks.
In other 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 relatively uncommon in much of Europe.
In much of the United States and Canada, the addressing systems follow a block-number system, in which each block of a street is allotted 100 building numbers.
In the 20th century, a popular feature in urban planning was the superblock. A superblock is much larger than a traditional city block and is typically bounded by widely spaced, high-speed, arterial or circulating routes rather than by local streets. Superblocks are generally associated with suburbs, planned cities, and the urban renewal of the mid-20th century. In a residential area of a suburb, the interior of the superblock is typically served by cul-de-sac roads.
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