Should Cities be Circles?

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?

Resources on this topic:

Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.
Trans rights.

[pruwyben]

The Circleville Squaring Company sounds like something out of a children's book.

[hgataro]

I was so devastated to learn they squared circlevill

[dalton-at-work]

"circleville squaring company" is so funny

[lennarth.]

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.

[duden]

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.

[PradeepSathyan]

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.

[daninthelionsden]

I often think about the concept of hexagonal city planning.

[FeltNokia]

I'm surprised Canberra wasn't mentioned.

[darkglass]

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.

[KelFert]

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.

[PipoZePoulp]

"an inefficient use of land" when you want to sell plots.

[danielc]

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.

[craigroaring]

Personally I think organic growth is what makes a city beautiful. Geometric shapes give me the impression of a dystopia, cold and clinical.

[mmoonttii]

Milan, Italy is also a pretty circular city, maybe one of the best example of it

[SupremeLeaderKimJong-un]

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!

[AverytheCubanAmerican]

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.

[annaalva]

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.

[jonnitin]

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.

[imilic]

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.

[carlospcpro]

Here in Mexico, we have a city called "Delicias" in the state of Chihuahua, pretty circular or oval ish