Should Cities be Circles?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
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Most cities have streets that are in a grid pattern, cul-de-sacs, or organic jumble. But cities could be arranged as circles, in a radial-concentric configuration. In fact, there are examples throughout history of cities being designed this way. What are the advantages, and why aren't they more popular?
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Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
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The Circleville Squaring Company sounds like something out of a children's book.
Like a simpsons episode
It sounds like they would face off against the Squareville Circling Company
@@rooryan
Note: I had this written using an AI cause I'm not that creative nor am I good at Dr. Seuss rhyming schemes.
In the land of Squiggles, where shapes abound,
Two companies clashed, their voices resound.
The Circleville Squaring, a prideful bunch,
Dealt in perfect corners, not a curve to be crunched.
Their rivals, the Squareville Circling crew,
Embraced the round things, both big and brand new.
They'd circle and twirl, with circles galore,
While the Squarers just scoffed, and wanted no more.
"Circles are sloppy!" the Squarers would shout,
"Squares are superior, without a doubt!"
The Circleville crew, with a mischievous grin,
Responded, "Dear Squarers, your shapes are so thin!"
They circled the Squarers, and round they did go,
The Squarers got dizzy, they didn't know how to flow.
So they stomped and they grumbled, with frowns on their face,
As the Circlers just laughed, and continued their chase.
The moral of this, as the story unfolds,
Is that different is okay, new shapes to behold.
So embrace all the shapes, the circles, the squares,
And remember, dear friend, there's room for all pairs!
Sounds like the antagonist
Definitely a villains name
I was so devastated to learn they squared circlevill
And yet, they still call it Circleville, lol.
"You had one job!!" or "You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!"
dang freemasons :P
More to the point they destroyed the mounds.
@@suzettehenderson9278 Such a tragic and sad loss of archeological history.
"circleville squaring company" is so funny
The most American thing
What a bunch of squares
hay, this circle is square!
After the squaring was completed, they ought to have renamed it to "Squareville"...
It goes in the square hole
Karlsruhe in Germany is a City with two major rings around a palace in the middle. The inner ring has a diameter of 900 meters and the outer ring has a diameter of 2.3 kilometers. When going from the west side of the city to the east side, there are two options. Driving along a horizontal line directly having to wait for traffic lights and jams. Or driving along the outer ring with way less traffic and almost equivalent times.
The main benefit for pedestrians and cyclists is being able to orientate along the rays pointing towards the palace, which you can see from most streets in the downtown area.
Also, most larger buildings along the inner ring have a trapezoid shape to fit the curve.
First city that came to mind
It is shown at 7:37
Thomas Jefferson visited Karlsruhe in 1788, was impressed with the street design and used it as a model for Washington D.C.!
Sadly not the circular design tho, but the way the streets lead straight away from the White House is modeled after Karlsruhe.
Karlsruhe is a odd city. One of the very few planned cities of Europe. It looks old, but it's not. (Built/planned in 1715)
And it ended mostly being a half-circle and the most important roads are tangential now.
Cologne has also a circular orientation.
I think Moscow must be one of the most circular cities. Its ring road system (MKAD) consists of three main circles, that are shaped a lot more like actual circles rather than the squares of Beijing. Also, the streets are actually converging to the center, so it is not a grid city with rings around it. At the center, fittingly, is the Kremlin.
MKAD is only one of the ring roads, which is one of the newest ones, finished in 1962.
By the way not only roads follow the circle/chords system but also metro, urban and suburban train networks.
@@di_dmitriev Да я из регионов, в Москву прилетаю только погулять, так что очень посредственно разбираюсь в ее географии. Почему-то думал что МКАД это сразу несколько колец, спасибо что рассказал!
Road Rings
1 Kremlin ring (not actual name but just set of one way roads about Kremlin ),
2 Boulevar Ring
3 Garden Ring,
4 Third ring
5 MKAD
6 CKAD / A107
7 A108
Rail rings
1 Circular line (underground)
2 TCK (overground)
3 Big circular line (underground)
3 Moscow rail circle (overground)
Same as Valencia, Spain.
#DARABGERD is the oldest "perfect circle" city, IRAN 500BC.
Circle/circular city made in places between the sea and mountain for saving purposes and defensive.
Moscow not have those signatures.
Thrissur, my city in Kerala, India is an ancient circular city. There is a large park and a temple in the middle. The old castle, court buildings, treasury, important buildings were along the inner most circle.
Hey, I checked Thrissur on Google maps, but it doesn't look circular!? www.google.com/maps/place/Thrissur,+Kerala/@10.5112901,76.2197329,13z/
I often think about the concept of hexagonal city planning.
Hexagon is the bestagon
The problem with hexagons is that a straight path turns into a series of back and forths
@@birdrocketactually that's not a problem. Those back and forth s are laid in 120° rather than 90° so curves are a lot more gentle. Also, it regulates speed, overly straight paths are more dangerous than they are convenient. Hexagonal grids also only allow for 3 way intersections which, because of the angles and the reduced conflict points, are markedly safer than an equivalent 4 way.
@@sabikikasuko6636 if you’re designing for cars, sure. But cities are the dominion of pedestrians, and intentionally making the route longer than it needs to be harms walkability
@@birdrocketit's a bit of a wash, cuz some trips will be shorter some will be longer. Fewer straight lines, but you're also cutting diagonals.
Also in a well designed city that is PLEASANT to walk in, the extra 2 min of walking could be desirable to residents .
I'm surprised Canberra wasn't mentioned.
Yes the inner south (around Parliament House) took this idea further than pretty much any other 20th century city. The inner north is fairly standard grid, and the rest is typical feeder road/loops + cul de sac suburbia.
same
Yeah, particularly @ 3:40, as a modern comparison to the round city of Baghdad.
Both examples putting a major landmark in the centre of a circle to identify its prominence.
Canberra Represent!
ninja'd
I find it a weird coincidence that this video about circle cities came up right after the new Pokémon video game was announced yesterday that featured an iconic circle city in one of its games.
Algorithmically designed coincidence perhaps?
Exactly what I thought
I think he had insider knowledge, he's hinting it with that pidove on the shelf
exactly what i was thinking. ig lumiose is a well designed city
This video was out about a week ago on Nebula. Is that a coincidence?
Personally I think organic growth is what makes a city beautiful. Geometric shapes give me the impression of a dystopia, cold and clinical.
Corona resident here, born and raised. There's a very good reason for our large circle road (now called Grand Blvd). It was originally a race track. Corona had the largest (or one of the largest) prizes for car races outside Indianapolis back in the early 1900's. As the city grew, the race track was moved north east. I remember going there to see a couple races there. But they were more demolition derby type races.
The nickname for our town is "The Circle City". or 'Crown Town' 👑 if you're OG like that.
Keep up the great work. Love your videos.
Had some jerk from ojt of town ask me for directions, I told him get in grand and take it till the end then make a right😂
The problem with the racetrack was that it trapped people inside the city. Me and my friend won $25 back in the day for a history day project on this. After the librarians let us scour the library for hours they finally showed us everything that was stashed in a little room between the upper and lower levels of the library ( remember the good old library scandal, way over budget, lost over half the books... so sad whats happened to corona, it used to have access to the mountains and smelled like orange blossoms. Or if you were unlucky you smelled the Chino cows....)
this right here! ^^ IE resident, and noticed this when he said "no reason". i was like.... hmmm im pretty sure being near horse town usa has something to do with it
A more interesting example of a circular design is the borough of Pitman in New Jersey. Located in Gloucester County outside Philadelphia. The borough was named for Rev. Charles Pitman, a Methodist minister. In 1871, land was chosen in both Glassboro and Mantua Township to be set aside for a Methodist summer camp meeting. The New Jersey Conference Camp Meeting Association was officially chartered and given authority over the land grant in 1872, and began planning the campground and organizing meetings. It was chosen to have an auditorium located on a central meeting ground, and twelve avenues originated from the central area as spokes on a wheel, with each of these avenues being a walkway, today still not used for cars.
This area became known as the Pitman Grove, and while worshipers' tents originally lined each of the twelve avenues, cottages slowly replaced the tents and formed the foundation of the town of Pitman. By the 1880s, the number of cottages increased to 400 and residents had begun staying year-round, both of which led to the establishment of the first public school in 1884. The Grove directors resisted the secularization of the Methodist retreat but in 1904, Grove residents voted 122 to 35 for incorporation as an autonomous borough. In 1905, Governor of New Jersey Edward C. Stokes signed a law granting the incorporation. Until 2014, Pitman was a dry town!
I live near Pitman. Nice little town next to a major college town. My great-grandmother lived in one of those cottages at the Grove.
I think you have lost a really good opportunity to talk about Moscow. It's clearly very circular. Roads are actually called "first circle", "second circle".... Also there are a lot of radial roads. And if you look at the metro map, the roundness of cit becomes even clearer.
Yup I was about to say it, and found your comment
Nah Beijing not only is more circular but the main CBDs are around the ring roads and ring subway lines.
I also thought about this, and it is true, but as a Moscow dweller I'd say that Moscow is closer to being an organic city that evolved around the kremlin and its difference from the examples given is that it is not circular deliberately, though it still is
Cities with tons of circles are awful. I used to do deliveries in DC years ago, and it makes traffic a nightmare and the buildings with weird shapes have a ton of wasted spaces because they are often too narrow to use or don't fit furniture, or if you have a triangular corner of windows the heat in summer is unbearable and it's freezing in winter especially since the buildings are old and poorly insulated. The idea was complete garbage and the reason it was done was to imitate Paris and to allow Cannons to shoot down roads as a defensive maneuver in case of war, but it was obsolete before the city got built because of artillery improvements. So it's a mess for no reason really.
Walt's original concept for EPCOT was also supposed to be a utopian circular city inspired by Howard, but of course after Walt's death, this concept was shelved and turned into a theme park. Not a circular city but a city that takes its design from circular cities is La Plata in Argentina. After La Plata was designated the provincial capital of Buenos Aires Province, urban planner Pedro Benoit was hired to design it, who designed a city layout based on a rationalist conception of urban centers. The city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north to south and east to west. In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonal streets. This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. For every six blocks, there is a small park or square.
Other than the diagonal streets, all streets are on a rectangular grid and are numbered consecutively. Thus, La Plata is nicknamed "la ciudad de las diagonales" (city of diagonals), as well as being called "la ciudad de los tilos" (or city of linden trees), because of the large number of linden trees lining the many streets and squares. The designs for the government buildings were chosen in an international architectural competition. Thus, the Governor Palace was designed by Italians, the City Hall by Germans, etc. Electric street lighting was installed in 1884 and was the first of its kind in Latin America.
Came here to say this. If you search for the Florida Epcot film, you can see a very interesting video about the proposal and the last video to feature Walt before he died.
Avery! It's been so long since I've seen one of your comments but I guess our interests must be converging again
Milan, Italy is also a pretty circular city, maybe one of the best example of it
It doesn't even remotely resemble a circle, unlike Karlsruhe for example
Milan and the like have simply outgrown their original circle. But you can still see it. Vienna, Prague, smaller cities like Ulm etc. all show that too. However, that's all "most efficient way to build a defensive wall" sorta circular, with no specific street layout inside.
You can still see it in cities that have not outgrown their original city walls, like Nördlingen.
What about Mumbai?
Palmanova comes to mind. Half of the streets are pedestrian-friendly and the whole town is very vibrant and welcoming.
There are many cities like this in Europe.
U should’ve finished the video lol
The one bit I'm kinda surprised wasn't mentioned in this video (though it may have been out of scope) was Walt Disney's vision for Epcot. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a circular city inspired by Ebenezer Howard and not a theme park. It never happened since he was unable to get funding for this project.
Actually, he sadly just died before it could be built. The plan was always to start with the theme park district and expand out from there and it's the reason WDW had its on improvement district until recently and built the town of celebration eventually having previously committed to building places for people to live in the original proposal. The people mover and monorail were designed to work in this city model and not to be attractions at the theme park. That was just a convenient testing ground.
In case of a glaciation, you can always put a big ass generator right in the middle of a circular city, to minimize heat losses.
I'd be down for it just so long as the city doesn't serve soup.
I hate soup.
What about gigant, coal-powere robots doing precision surgery? I bet nothing could go wrong...
You can also put some peripheral or satellite generators if you need heat losses to be minimal
dang, no mention of Black Rock City? circles everywhere! I love how easy it is to navigate there, although blocks get pretty long on the outer streets. Great video though, I'm really diggin the circle and hexagon ideas.
"an inefficient use of land" when you want to sell plots.
If a circle is several miles in diameter, all city blocks outside of the central region can be perfect rectangles, while buildings in the city center tend to be designed from the ground up anyways and can have other shapes
The only reason America went with the grid system which influenced the rest of the world was purely because of the ease of laying out new plots for sale. It's incredibly inefficient for the movement of vehicles and pedestrian traffic though as you need diagonal roads/paths which more circular cities are more suitable for.
Or build buildings
Did you watch the video?
Cause that is, at best, a footnote-level reason.
@@kaneworsnop1007 If you have small block sizes (or a combination of sizes) with plenty of connecting lanes and open spaces for pedestrian access, you can have really efficient grid-based cities - especially good for public transit if you get it right. But America's grids tend to be huge block sizes and the roads are usually quite large and car-only, which is great for selling lots but not efficient long-term. I personally like the Paris style grid combined with a spoke style layout, even if it's not ideal
BlackRockCity. It is constructed, new, every year, and is circular with spokes. I believe it's heavily inspired by ideal urban planning ideals.
Here in Mexico, we have a city called "Delicias" in the state of Chihuahua, pretty circular or oval ish
The fact that this came out right after Pokemon Legends ZA was announced, which is going to take place entirely within a circular city, is honestly pretty funny
I love this channel, I've followed your work since the beginning and I'm a big admirer. but I am saddened by the absence of cities from South America or Africa in your approach.
As someone who has traveled around the world, I have been in several circular city. The big problem is traffic. All roads in these cities go through the city center causing huge traffic problems. Ring roads were never thought of when old circular cities were built.
I can’t believe you made a video about circular cities without mentioning Canberra, Australia!
Exactly. None of the cities mentioned had anything like the number of circles Canberra has. Canberra is the city that will literally have you going round and round in circles.
You should check Santa Cruz de la Sierra, it is the largest city in Bolivia and it is organized just that way, the entire city is circular and there are up to 9 rings that are literally called literally "anillos" ("rings" in Spanish) and each main avenue is a radius of the circle, even some avenue is called "radial" ("raidal" in Spanish) and in the center of the entire city, within the first ring is the main plaza and the cathedral of the city that was built at its foundation. It is very intuitive to locate yourself just by knowing the nearest avenue (radius) and the ring you are on, like: I'm in the Av. Cristo Redentor between the Second and the Third ring.
As an Urban Planner I always find it a little funny and fascinating how almost all the most famous urban planners, where never actually urban planners in the modern sense of the term, Ebenezer Howard was a stenographer, Moses was a political appointee, a famous one near me called Thomas Mawson was a Landscape Architect. Now they were very intelligent people who apart from moses had fully read up on the most up-to-date designs of urban planning and improved upon it woth fantastic innovative ideas (again apart from Moses), so I'm not being an Ivory tower kind of person it is just interesting. I did a Geography undergraduate and the same happens in that, so I can't catch a break with the subjects I'm most interested in.
Go back in time and you find artist's designing buildings and town/city layouts. Or Stone masons used to design buildings. I guess a lot of it was because the job roles didn't exist at the time and gradually came in to existence.
@@kaneworsnop1007 exactly so true
We're so specialised now we take for granted just how many hats people had to wear in ye olden days!
I think citys need all three designs - spaghetti, square and circle depending on their function.
Circle for large ring roads/highways and underground transport for quick public transport around the city.
Square (in a grid or large up to 1km) to section the city allowing movement with car/busses on the outskirt of the square
Spaghetti within the square for efficient movement for people walking/cycling
Karlsruhe is a good example of an 18th century planned circular city
Charlottenburg in Romania is a very good example for a circular village fro the 18th century planned around the main administrative buildings like the church, school, primary house etc.
Shoutout to Lumiose City in Kalos, truly the circular city of all time 😂! Another example of a circular garden city design is Canberra! Roads named for each of Australia's state capitals converge at Capital Circle or State Circle. When Walter Burley Griffin planned Canberra, it was originally envisaged there would be a number of circular concentric roads around Capital Hill, but only Capital Circle and State Circle were ever fully completed. Capital Hill is part of the National Triangle, connecting with City Hill and Russell Hill, representing the civilian and defence parts of Canberra respectively. In the middle of Constitution Ave is the Anzac Parade leading to the Australian War Memorial, built on Mount Ainslie, done on purpose so one could see it across the lake from Capital Hill!
The reason Rotonda West in Florida is circular has an interesting story. The land on which Rotonda sits was owned originally by brothers William Henry Vanderbilt VIII and Alfred Vanderbilt. William was a former Governor of Rhode Island from 1939 to 1941. The brothers acquired the Rotonda land in 1952 where they raised cattle. Eventually, it was sold to Cavanagh Leasing Corporation of Miami in 1969 when ranching became uneconomical. Its development began in 1970. The layout of Rotonda West precisely mimics the temporary World War II airfields that were set up in Florida, laid out like a wagon wheel. The choice of the airfield layout gives it a flavor of Florida history, however there was no airfield at this location prior to development. The CEO Joe Klein liked the idea of a round community, he said, “If we built it square, fewer would have come here. Rounder is softer and more romantic.”
I recall that there is a circular city called "Tekesi Bagua City" still functioning today in the Xinjiang region of China, which was constructed in the 1930s by the local ROC military commander.
"Bagua city" is a city with octagon ring roads
I'm surprised Detroit wasn't mentioned as its much larger than some of the other examples here. In the early 1800s, most of the town burned down in a fire. When it was rebuilt, they went with a "wheel and spoke" design, like a circle city. Some of this has been changed in the years since, but if you look at a map of downtown now you can still see part of that radial city design even now. The center focused on parks and theaters.
9:01 I would say the only thing correct abou this is the rich housing being mainly concentrated on one road that goes from the City/Town centre outwards to the countryside, it is amazing how common/almost universal this feature is, as soon as you get above a population of about 10,000
I was expecting you to mention Australian capital, Canberra especially talking about Garden city movement - I would say that is a good example of a circle city
I've been saying to international students lost here in my home city that it is just a bunch of wonky concentric cirlces For a while. Enschede, with 162k inhabitants, is the 16th most populous Dutch municipality and the largest city in an international urban agglomoration of over 400k. The "old town' city centre is a ringed by road and from it radiates outwards eight main roads, which are intersected by a large ringroad (the "Singel", named after dutch canals that circle towns which did exist here around the old medieval town) and further out by a partial ring road (the "round way") that doesn't quite connect in the north. This came to be after the loss of the Southern Netherlands and the textile industry relocating to this small medieval town. Enschede grew rapidly from a small medieval town(ship) to the Manchester of the Netherlands. It rapidly expanded post-war again, and is still currently expanading at a slower rate. It is surrounded by ring of greenery, from high heather, moors, forests and the famed bocage landscape (meadows and fields fenced of with thin bands of forest). The city sits on the western flank of a
Five main rail roads radiated outward too, 2 of which converted to main road ways and one to a main tram line, later main bus/bike road. A number of car roads converted to bike roads radiate to the suburbs and beyond too (the city is one of the most spread out in area cities of the netherlands). A bike highway to the next city over is being build currently next to one the existing railroads, while soon the other existing railroad to germany will be moved underground (and electrified and doubled in tracks) Unfortunatly we have probably permanently lost the Enschede tramlines.
The city deindustrilised rapidly, partly with the thorough help of Allied bombers (who thought they were over Nazi Germany as they navigated by the night-lights of the cities) and most massive factory complexes are gone now, but the radial pattern and circular road still influence the fabric of the city. The city, even tho marketing as The Bicycle City of the Netherlands, is massivly car, especially as it is a shopping haven and tourist destination to a large densily populated german hinterland. The rebuilding of th ecity happened also during the car craze. As such which was for a while the largest underground parking facility in western europe existed underneath the eastern part of the city center. To alliviate the car congestion around the city center nowadays, some parts of the inner most ring road have been partially made porous to bycicles but not cars, and converted to roads that favour the cyclists over motorised vehicles. The current mission of the municipality's infrastructure board is to redirect as much motorised trafic that until recently could and would go through the inner ring road over to the second ring road.
Even the large Twente canal, during the 1930s dug accross a fifth of the width of Netherlands terminating in this city, neatly conforms to the radiating pattern. Enschede isn't like the other dutch cities of water, without a large body of water, but it never the less is: it is a city of springs where numerous small streams originate as it sits on a hill ridge ontop of elevations comparable to the German side over the Dutch side. Ground water from Germany first rises and than drops further, resulting in many creeks flowing through the rather poorly fertile sand soils of the hill ridge. To compansate the poor quality of the soil, the landscape is dotted with constructed hills made by layering organic material from the heather and moors uphill and the heaps from the marches at the rivervalley, a so called 'es' or 'esch' the tallest in the world of which at the south of Enschede
I recommend adjusting the circular city design a bit. Make it triangles instead. (I give a long explanation, you have been warned): With triangles you can keep adding triangular suburbs effectively forever AND, most importantly, you can set up metro lines under all the main roads that the triangle edge could be made of. This would result in a Soviet style triangle design metro like in Prague where it's implemented almost perfectly, with the exception of 1 of the 3 stations, the line to line metro transfers are incredibly efficient, the station platforms are beneath each other and so you can take an escalator up/down, straight to another lines platform in like 1.5 mins. The triangle design also has benefits even as you leave the city centre, you can run tram lines in the median of all the main roads of other triangles attached to the center one on the outskirts of the city centre providing coverage and interconnecting with the now radial metro lines, and when you get really far, trolleybuses can do the same. Feel free to provide counterarguments but as far as I'm concerned a triangle is the ultimate shape, basically for everything, including city design.
0:49 this very specific information is oddly satisfying. Knowing that the circleville squaring company has existed, with the sole purpose of squaring the circle of circleville... Sounds like a dr Seuss like story.
There's Moscow with three main ring roads (many more arcs) and a radial design for the main avenues and highways. Also, there are three ring rail lines (two of them are metro lines, and the third is a surface line with suburban-model trains)
When i was a geography undergrad, we were introduced to "Central Place Theory" by Walter Christaller. This German planner developed it in the 1920s, and it was not adopted for urban use, but it was for rural and agriculture.
It's a temporary city, but the layout of the annual Burning Man festival in the desert north of Reno, Nevada, very much has a circular concept.
The iconic multi-storey Man figure is at the center, surrounded by open space for a variety of art installations, then rings of lots for people to set up their tents/RVs/what-have-you. The streets follow a grid-like logic with the "spokes" having clock names (12, 9, 6, 4 o'clock and so on) while the ring roads emanating outward follow the alphabet based on that year's artistic theme (recently it was Animalia, so the streets had names like Aardvark, Bee, Cat, Dog, Elephant, Frog, etc). It's easy to give people location information, i.e. "I'm camping near 7:30 & Fern" or "There is an amazing Trojan Horse you can climb into on the Playa at 3!".
There are service centers at logical places where you can buy ice or get medical attention.
Roughly 80,000 people live in Black Rock City over the week, largely biking from one spot to the other to experience artworks, dances, musical performances or other happenings. Then after the event wraps they all scatter back to their homes and a largely volunteer crew cleans up the dry lakebed as much as possible to return again next year. Amusingly, the circular road patterns remain after all of the structures have been removed.
It's all fun and games until someone gives you an address on Rod's Road.
Here in Brazil, the main one is Feira de Santana, in the state of Bahia. The outer circle was created to divert heavy traffic away from inside the city because Feira de Santana is located at the conjunction of several federal highways.
Delicias, Chihuahua México is a circular city designed in the 1930’s.
From the map it looks they hired the Circleville Squaring Company as apart from a ring road around the center (I presume) it's very square (with diagonal roads).
Definitely very close to being identical or even inspirational. The designer was a civil engineer named Carlos Blake. There’s a boulevard named after him in the northwest of the city.
The centre of Amsterdam is a half-circle and it's really conveniënt since everything feels closeby. I love living here. You should check it out!
4:32 that Beijing metro map,is already many years old. There are already way more lines and extensions.
Beijing's ring road system was built where the outer wall and the inner wall around the city were demolished by the CPP, because natural right of way. There was an inner inner wall but that was around the Forbidden City palace complex at the very centre of the middle kingdom.
Most cities in Europe are circular on a slightly larger level, and instead of one massive interchange in the middle, that is where a car free shopping zone usually is. It's not usually entirely neat, but the concepts remain the same, whether you put a few bumps in the circle to adapt to hills, rivers and bigger buildings, or you make it geometricly perfect.
Square grid is by far the worst layout, as you are constantly on a potentially major crossing, if they are all the same. Don't get me wrong, we still have them, even the strong grid ones, mostly build in the baroque. Everyone I've lived in was annoying and slow to drive in. But more likely you will have more rectangular grid shaped smaller areas, but more circular structures on a large level to facilitate the major routes. That and roundabouts of course, which the US for some reason doesn't seem to understand.
Cul-de-sac like structures are more common in less dense parts of the city, while the most dense will also feature limitations for cars and lots of paths for bikes and walking only, not cars, that may effectively work a bit more like that, than grids.
Creating an entire video about Circular Cities and not even mentioning Moscow. What a great job!
Australia's capital, Canberra, has its centre based around 2 sets of concentric circle with radial spokes on opposite sides of a river. It's also very much a planned city.
My hometown of Lexington, KY has radial “spokes” coming out from the center of the city and two circular local highways that go around connecting the spokes. These highways are “New Circle Rd.” And Man O War Rd.
it is technically not near me as I live in NZ, but Canberra has 2 circles next to each other.
Yes
Canberra, the Capital of Australia, was planned as a circular city. Newer suburbs of the city however are designed along conventional patterns.
The center of Annapolis Maryland is a circle hub and when I filmed there last year I found it so frustrating to say the least. Its one of the few cities that didn’t adopt the Manhattan\Philly grid layout and makes for such a clumsy way of moving around.
Rotonda West was supposed to be accompanied by a Rotonda East in Martin County, Florida (opposite side of the peninsula). In fact, the latter was planned first, in the late 1960s, but the location faced too much opposition and never broke ground.
In both cases, the circular design - motto: "City In The Round" - was the entire gimmick.
I'm not so much a fan of pure rational city design. There are several reasons why people enjoy being in European medieval city centers way more than modern city centers but one is for sure that it's irregular. Much repetition really sucks, especially when you go/drive there every day. It feels super unnatural. I mean a circle city is still better than a grid city but I think city should look more like "organisms" than machines. Reading Camillo Sitte is very inspiring for that (it's for free online).
No mention of Black Rock City (Burning Man)??? It was 73K people last year, arranged in a *glorious* 1.5-mile-diameter concentric circle.
Hexagons are superiors. 3 way intersections, more efficient use of land than circles, repeating geometric pattern. in dense zoning you can put large buildings. in less dense areas you can put cul du sacs in side them.
Yes, but are the advantages worth having triangular or parallelogram shaped plots, making buildings more expensive and inconveniently shaped?
I live near Rotonda West in Florida. It has an interesting history. It was designed after Atlantis, a ring city. It has ringed canals that the developers said would be opened up to a waterway so residents would have boats to go to the Gulf of Mexico. The government said no you can’t connect to the waterway, before the project began. They built it anyway and it went bankrupt. To be fair the area has several other planed communities that all went bankrupt in the seventies. Those communities are now thriving.
No mention of the Auravana Project or the Venus Project, both of whom are working on circular layouts.
Nor Burning Man Project
Norwich, England is a city built around 3 circles. It’s three rings, the inner ring road (which follows the route of the medieval city wall), the outer ring road (developed after the war) and the A47 and NDR (developed in recent years) all circulate around the centre point of the city, the castle. It’s actually a very easy city to navigate and get around because of its clock like system. Although it has developed quite organically it is a pretty good example of a circular city.
Moscow is circle technically
Amsterdam has a semi-circle structure. And there were at least three reasons to made it like that:
1 transportation (which went by water at the time)
2 defense (the fortification was easiest done in a circular structure)
3 it connected to an easy way to cultivate the swampy landscape
I think you should not build a city circular only because they are nice, but it needs a function to remain that way.
La Plata in Argentina is not a circle, but a grid with crisscrossing diagonals. It has a lot of the advantages of a circular city, but I think a bit more practical
Can’t forget about one of the other most famous circular city designs, the originally E.P.C.O.T. was going to be a circular city instead of a theme park with multiple “floors” to it.
I’d be curious to learn more about if radial cities actually reduce traffic. Living in Chicago, it seems terrible with all of the major points of interest in the middle as opposed to a true grid city where the public transit followed the grid shape
I remember a circular city was my design for a perfect city when playing city skylines as a kid. I’m very curious what this video has to say!
I did the same thing. Then I realized It has become a grid with curves which the game can't handle without leaving unzoned spaces everywhere.
Hexagon is the best
You should check out Eindhoven in the Netherlands! There's two ring roads, the rondweg ("round road") and randweg ("edge road", this is the highway ring but it's not closed on the east side), with radial roads originating from the train station in the middle. It mostly grew in the 20th century
Wow. This comes out just after watching the preview for Pokémon Legends Z-A. Wild timing.
I live in Rotonda West, The center was originally planned as a commercial hub, but it took so long to build out the residential areas that it never really came to fruition. Now there's a park, RV & Boat storage, and water supply tank in the center. There is still commercial zoned land in the center, and who knows someday there may be some shops and restaurants in the center.
I've seen it from the air when I fly to RSW to visit family. It looks pretty ridiculous, but it's Florida. i have very low expectations there.
Look up Nahalal, a village in Israel shaped as a circle in light of Socialism.
Every house in equally close to the center of the village, and has the same excess to agricultural lands.
The problem was the village can't really grow.
So a New model was formed, with half circles arranged in a row with the main road connection them. Best example is in the close by village of Kfar Yehoshua
I remember an old Lego City floor plastic mat or foundations if you will which you built your Lego City upon, but unlike Legos there should be a foundation mat with every possible mixing so fits different geography shapes, to build upon.
0:48 spreadsheet looking ahh city
There are settlements that have to be circles.
E.g. a Kibbutz
usually these places were built close to the border and were subject of attacks.
The middle circle is always the most sensitive part of the Kibbutz.
Schools, kindergartens and nurseries are aways in the most protected location, then the houses, the industries, the fence and then the fields.
Delicias, Chihuahua, Mexico has a circle road but its a grid on the inside....
Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil has more of the radial set up but it's only a half circle
An interesting example of this is the Town of Mount Royal (TMR) in Montreal. Originally a suburb of Montreal it was designed to support the new rail line that was cut under Mount Royale (Montreal) to the downtown.
Hexagons. Let's make it happen.
Canberra in Australia was originally a planned city with a multi-centric circular design. Founded in 1913 after the circular design won an international design contest.
Me, who lived in Moscow most of my life, was extremely confused when I figured out that most cities are not circle shape. It was just so intuitive for me. I am absolutely lost when I visit any grid city
What makes thing more mad, that towns surrounded Moscow connected in circles two, multiple times!
Mentioning Ebenezer Howard as an example was just crazy… garden cities are a very cute and poetic form of the north American flawed suburbs. This video is great for presenting old concepts and talking about fun curious facts, congrats on that. But contemporary urban problems are related to cultural (capitalist and transportation) dilemmas, not shapes.
Canberra, the capital of Australia, has a cool big circle and a hexagon. The parliament house is in the middle of the circle and lines up nicely with the hexagon and the Australian war memorial. it is an entirely planned city.
You should take a look at Cologne, Germany…
It’s not a perfect circle, but orientated with ring roads and a green belt intersecting throughout the city
Delicias, Chihuahua is a circular city
I visited Palmanova, in Italy last year. Beautiful place and an incredible design. The central square (or hexagon) is stunning
Moscow, duh.
Dothan, a city in Alabama that I grew up near, is sometimes called "circle city" locally due to it's own lumpy bypass called Ross Clark Circle.
Corona California actually has the "nickname" of "Circle City".. like you said because of the circular Grand Boulevard, also wonder if it is not because of its name. Corona meaning Crown in Spanish.
It's just a circle road, the rest is square, but it is mentioned in the video at the start (at 1:30).
The one of the best planned city is Curitiba, Brazil that has utilised a circular model and a good historic city, Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan, is also a good one to look at.
There is a type of German village called Rundling, where there is generally a common, no-man's land in the middle, and the houses are built around it:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundling
In my opinion, circling (at least in its pure form) works the best in small places, like villages. Because it naturally directs people towards the center, the bigger the village/town, the fewer people can be able to take advantage of the center. Kind of like the Ponzi schemes bring the wealth to the person at the top (or in the center), while others that have fewer links to that person get less and less money until the scheme collapses (as nobody can join anymore).
Of course, a regular large city grew beyond that point. So, as you mentioned in the video, circling is done in order to actually prevent people from "crushing" the city center. Through traffic is guided to the side of the ring, and they are more and more localized - so you don't need to go to the city center as much in order to get to where you need.
american cant understand a roundabout how can they understand a circular city.
Lol i read cicling as cycling.
Btw, a ciclic cyclable city sounds absolutely beatiful ;-)
@@no_name4796City Beautiful one might say.
America has many roundabouts.
@darrellking7831 But do US citizens understand them?
@@88marome Yes, you guys just see people on social media using one for the first time and think that is all americans. Most cities in the US have roundabouts and have had them for a while. And american drivers have no problem using them.
Great video.
In fact, in 2003 I attended the world scout jamboree in Thailand. A gathering of 20'000 scouts from all over the world. To accomodate all of us, a camp site has been built and it was shaped as... (no surprise) two circles. Every circle had a supermarket and a common area in the center. Then, the rest was divided into sub-camps (like cloves). Starting from the center to the outside in a typical sub-camp: Sub-camp main entry, commodities and offices, showers, a stage for sub camp activities, the actual camp ground for tents and then garbage collection area at the very outer side (so that the garbage collecting trucks, and other utilities trucks, just had to travel along the outer circular road).
The two circles were connected by a main road, cutting both circles in half and, in the space between the circles, there were other areas dedicated to specific activities. It all felt very organized and easy to navigate.
Today, the area (12.611033271004988, 100.94039303914639) has been reconverted for military purposes, but on satellite imagery it is still possible to see the two concentric circles with the road connecting the two circles.
Any EPCOT fans here?
You should look up Welwyn Garden City - its shopping centre is named the Howard Centre after its designer!
Auckland City, New Zealand, had an early proposal for a circular layout in a section of the CBD back in 1840 as it was growing. Although the proposal did not go through.
i know a lot of circular cities, with a circle and a star like infrastructure
berlin, paris, london, moskow
switch the map view to below street level and you will find
moskow even has 3 loops
we got a thing here, called public transport
Of course who could forget Canberra which ironically being the capital of Australia has the circile pattern with the national triangle in the middle of it
I'm so happy seeing Corona, CA getting mentioned in the vid
Jumeirah Village Circle is a 870 hectare development in Dubai which is composed of six districts with parks as radiating spokes in most of those districts. All the parks converge on a small central park that is surrounded by a neighborhood of villas. The major issue with the neighborhood is getting into and out of the circle via the surrounding freeways. If you are on a freeway going counterclockwise, you need to go several miles out of your way to do a U-turn or go through a congested freeway interchange to be on the inside ring of the freeway with entrances to the development. Since there are only four freeway access points in the development, these streets can become heavily congested during peak hours. When the village is fully built out, I expect these problems to worsen.
North Charleston, SC has a circle (Park Circle) in the center of the old downtown, and 8 streets radiating off it, and more modernly, a concentric elliptical section around Liberty Park. The Park Circle area is said to have been inspired by Ebenezer Howard's book.
Great timing with Lumiose City in Pokémon being circular and a new game centered around it just announced Feb 27th
park circle in north charleston *sort of* fits the criteria:
its a giant roundabout with 8 streets radiating out from it. recently, they put a huge playground and a community center there! very neat place