Why Don't Cities Use Hexagon Blocks?

Most cities have streets with gridded, organic, or cul-de-sac patterns. Why don't they use hexagons? They can be tiled indefinitely and create safer intersections.

This video relied on this great article:
Ben-Joseph, E., & Gordon, D. (2000). Hexagonal planning in theory and practice. Journal of Urban Design, 5(3), 237-265.

Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos
Select images and video from Getty Images.
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[telotawa]

if you split hexagons into three rhombuses, you can have the interior edges be for pedestrian and bike roads, so half the roads will have cars and the other half won't, and they'll be separate road networks in the same shape just offset by a certain amount

[Chronomatrix]

Cities Skylines II is launching at the end of October, a great excuse to try out an hexagonal layout, I'm very curious to see how efficient it can be.

[wernersen]

Hexagons would mean every Civ player could be a city planner

Hexagons are the bestagons 🐝🐝

[pedroSilesia]

I really like Muller's proposal. The fact that each building/flats facing some greenery seems as an completely underrated concept.

[lekhakaananta]

Just because something predominantly uses hexagons doesn't mean you have to suffer its downsides all the time without compromises. Like how grid layouts can have diagonal streets that cut through the perpendicular blocks, hexagon layouts can have main arterials that cut through certain hexagons to form a straight line. Then you end up with straight arterials and non-straight roads for everything lower on the hierarchy, which is exactly what you want.

For example you could cut every other hexagon in half (corner to corner) so that they match the rest of the lane already on the hexagon road network to form a straight line.

[Western_]

Holy crap what a wildly specific video that I am insanely into. I've spent hours in Sketchup years ago designing hexagonal cities, photoshop and studying plans like the original woodward plan for Detroit.

[TheRiskyBrothers]

So I think one reason the grid-iron pattern wins out over hexagons is that the 90 degree angles of the street pattern match the 90 degree angles common in construction. If you're building with wood or cement, the platform and pillar method is going to be what you use. Having box-shaped lots to match our box-shaped buildings means that you can get the largest floorplate possible for your property with a cheap and well-known construction technique.

I have been semi-obsessed with the idea of hexagon city layout ever since CGP Grey's video Hexagons are the Bestagons. My background is in IT and political science, not city planning or architecture, but for some reason it has been on my mind a lot.

[osasunaitor]

I suggest you search the Polish city of Gdańsk on a map, there is a disctric called Zaspa made entirely of giant hexagons.
I used to live there, it was a really clever planning. The edges of each hexagon contained the residential buildings, and in the centre of each hexagon a public facility (educational, sports, public services) surrounded by parks and gardens. Little roads rode along the edges of the hexagons and the rest was covered by pedestrian paths through the greeneries.
And then just outside the hexagonal grid were the big commercial venues and the public transport stops (trains stopped on one side and trams on the other).
It was a very practical and pleasant neighbourhood to live, quiet and walkable but with every service close enough.
Additionally the city administration had refurbished all the residential blocks (dating back to the communist era) and had organised a mural contest on them, where renowned artists had decorated the up to 13-stories tall buildings with giant murals from top to bottom, it was like walking through a giant open air musem.
I've lived in several cities and countries of Europe, and Zaspa will always have a special place in my heart.

[jonathanraithel]

Hexagon city plans would inevitably have some inefficiencies due to the rigidity of the geometry, which is less useful for daily living than planning. You would always be trying to fit a rooms and buildings with 120 or 60 degree angles that are more difficult to plan around than right angles, which are much more flexible to subdivide smaller spaces around.
Coming from an architectural background, hexagons are more effective at a macro scale than a micro scale, and the residents and users of a space are always thinking at a micro scale. It’s why Fowler’s Victorian octagon houses never caught on, because you do save on materials and space using polygons, but people don’t like trying to sweep or fit square furniture into the tiny corners octagons and hexagons make.

[EibaProductions]

In Italy there's a town called Palmanova, which is also based on a hexagon shape. It was actually built as a military base/stronghold for the Habsburg army. The center was the parade ground and the hexagon shape allowed the soldiers to reach the fortified walls from every direction equally fast.

[alexeylutskyi]

There's a whole district called Obolon in Kyiv based on hexagonal grid. However the hexagons themselves are not blocks but whole microdistricts (something similar to superblocks but with worse PR).

[MarcelVos]

You say there are only two post-industrial city layouts (grids and cul-de-sacs), but here in the Netherlands most new developments seem to be more organic than either of those two.

[Rothman]

3 points:
1: continuous tiling like you mention is called "tesselation", a function that enables the measurement of area, using continuous tiles that don't leave gaps or overlap can be used to measure area, most commonly squares but you can count also hexagons/ acres/ football fields etc to get total area.
2: Downtown Amsterdam and Budapest have street layouts very close to hexagons. With radial arteries leaving the center and concentric belts connecting them, like a hexagonal spiderweb.
3: The cell phone network IS laid out in hexagons. Each "cell" is one hexagon and each cell has three cell towers at alternating corners. You've likely noticed that cell tower tops have triangles. Each side of these triangles faces towards the center of one of the three intersecting cells at the tower. "Traingulating your location" is done by taking the signal strength to the three nearest towers and getting the distance to each of the towers to locate your phone using the three different radii to the towers.

[TheBronzeDog]

I've been designing a fictional city on a hex grid for a worldbuilding project, simply because I like hexagons. Good to know other people worked with the idea in a real world context, since that means I can research their stuff for inspiration.

[futenodeku]

my last city in Cities Skylines was made almost entirely out of hexagon grid with cul-de-sac centers. I was very pleased with how low the traffic was. I also included subway stops at the end of every cul-de-sac, in one out of every 7 hexagons (subway hub surrounded by 6 subwayless hexagons), which heavily discouraged traffic.

[loftycloud]

Nice to know I'm not the only one that played with this idea. I drew a whole city grid with hexagons. I considered block sizing, bike paths, pedestrian paths, major arteries, highways, mass transit, water/sewage. I considered special cases like hills and waterways and large facilities. Preformed maths for distances and area ratios. I kinda went all out. I love the idea. It has a lot of advantages I didn't even think about till after I started planning it. Even designed it so there was no stoplights at all!

[gulagkid]

Actually the 1960s Hautepierre neighbourhood in Straousbourg, France was divided into multiple hexagonal blocs so they aren't completely absent aside from planned capitals (in this case they are mostly occupied by social housing but also some commercial areas and city services)
It's also been retrofitted with a decent bike network and served by the A and D line trams

[sevegarza]

1:06 nobody would travers a square grid like that. They would do it in a way were they would only make one turn. Hexagon grids forces you to make a lot of turns.

[ehta]

One area where hexagons would really shine is urban city centers, just by building hexagonal buildings with open park/recreational areas in the middle you could increase efficiency of the buildings massively. All you need to do to get it working is to move infrastructure either underground or on the rooftops.