Should Cities be Circles?

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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?
Resources on this topic:
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Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
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[@pruwyben]

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

[@uhohhotdog]

Like a simpsons episode

[@rooryan]

It sounds like they would face off against the Squareville Circling Company

[@Rukhage]

@@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!

[@vaingloriant]

Sounds like the antagonist

[@TilmanBaumann]

Definitely a villains name

[@dalton-at-work]

"circleville squaring company" is so funny

[@Tommasso_]

The most American thing

[@carstarsarstenstesenn]

What a bunch of squares

[@Isteyak-78]

hay, this circle is square!

[@Elyandarin]

After the squaring was completed, they ought to have renamed it to "Squareville"...

[@alejandroflores3214]

It goes in the square hole

[@hgataro6374]

I was so devastated to learn they squared circlevill

[@MatthewTheWanderer]

And yet, they still call it Circleville, lol.

[@rcookie5128]

"You had one job!!" or "You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!"

[@NightmareRex6]

dang freemasons :P

[@suzettehenderson9278]

More to the point they destroyed the mounds.

[@FizzBuzz-ce9wz]

@@suzettehenderson9278 Such a tragic and sad loss of archeological history.

[@lennarth.6214]

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.

[@johannes914]

First city that came to mind

[@KarotteImBeet]

It is shown at 7:37

[@tim..indeed]

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.

[@TilmanBaumann]

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.

[@gerrrrrit]

Cologne has also a circular orientation.

[@duden9201]

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.

[@di_dmitriev]

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.

[@duden9201]

@@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!

[@maxinfly]

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)

[@delcane92]

Same as Valencia, Spain.

[@daninthelionsden]

I often think about the concept of hexagonal city planning.

[@ShaheenGhiassy]

Hexagon is the bestagon

[@birdrocket]

The problem with hexagons is that a straight path turns into a series of back and forths

[@sabikikasuko6636]

​@@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.

[@birdrocket]

@@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

[@searchingfortruth619]

​​@@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 .

[@Lumi-OF-Model]

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).

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

Not just Moscow: Every older European City or town has a ring road where once fortifications stood.

[@pavelmalikov5321]

went to the comment to mention Moscow, but you have been faster =)

[@voliminter]

Vienna also

[@MenePotion]

Stop upvoting the bots! It's a spam account copying someone else's comment.

[@krux02]

the scale of the circles of Moscow are unmatched. Many other circular cities out there, but none like Moscow. And I prefer the term spiderweb, it is closer to the actual shape.

[@darkglass3011]

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.

[@luddity]

Algorithmically designed coincidence perhaps?

[@sea6424]

Exactly what I thought

[@Legonizer]

I think he had insider knowledge, he's hinting it with that pidove on the shelf

[@DivyanshSingh24344]

exactly what i was thinking. ig lumiose is a well designed city

[@AL5520]

This video was out about a week ago on Nebula. Is that a coincidence?

[@AverytheCubanAmerican]

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.”

[@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.

[@tomprincipato7679]

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.

[@PipoZePoulp]

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

[@MVargic]

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

[@kaneworsnop1007]

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.

[@PatGunn]

Or build buildings

[@TooMuchThought]

Did you watch the video? Cause that is, at best, a footnote-level reason.

[@helplmchoking]

@@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

[@danielc56]

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.

[@onradioactivewaves]

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....)

[@pippin42069]

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

[@FeltNokia]

I'm surprised Canberra wasn't mentioned.

[@wyjpremium]

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.

[@SOmoeononononon]

same

[@cmacca9109]

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.

[@shelvinchand5565]

Canberra Represent!

[@prismaticmarcus]

ninja'd

[@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.

[@imilic8]

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.

[@Bundpataka]

U should’ve finished the video lol

[@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!

[@alexbrown2696]

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.

[@mmoonttii]

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

[@mixererunio1757]

It doesn't even remotely resemble a circle, unlike Karlsruhe for example

[@_SpamMe]

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.

[@DamoTours]

I can’t believe you made a video about circular cities without mentioning Canberra, Australia!

[@carlospcpro]

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

[@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.

[@tomprincipato7679]

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.

[@TheDiscotizer]

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.

[@Luke-kv9di]

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.

[@gabrieltambare9165]

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.

[@Toporshik]

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

[@lachlanwhite6855]

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

[@benjerwebb]

BlackRockCity. It is constructed, new, every year, and is circular with spokes. I believe it's heavily inspired by ideal urban planning ideals.

[@annaalva2320]

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.

[@Precel42]

Karlsruhe is a good example of an 18th century planned circular city

[@sebastianr1204]

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.

[@wyqtor]

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.

[@TheSpearkan]

I'd be down for it just so long as the city doesn't serve soup. I hate soup.

[@minkyone]

What about gigant, coal-powere robots doing precision surgery? I bet nothing could go wrong...

[@user-dv6yo5bc4z]

You can also put some peripheral or satellite generators if you need heat losses to be minimal

[@thetimonworld8201]

Moscow is circle technically

[@davidacus956]

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

[@Alex-cw3rz]

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

[@wisdomleader85]

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.

[@anacinus_lemius]

"Bagua city" is a city with octagon ring roads

[@raphaelgoettenauer]

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.

[@stupidemokid182]

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.

[@thompen]

it is technically not near me as I live in NZ, but Canberra has 2 circles next to each other.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

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.

[@kaneworsnop1007]

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.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

@@kaneworsnop1007 exactly so true

[@htspencer9084]

We're so specialised now we take for granted just how many hats people had to wear in ye olden days!

[@JonathanBondu]

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.

[@jorgemiguelmilano1535]

Wow. This comes out just after watching the preview for Pokémon Legends Z-A. Wild timing.

[@scottg.g.haller3291]

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.

[@n1vg]

It's all fun and games until someone gives you an address on Rod's Road.

[@Fargren]

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

[@VillageFlowerno1]

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

[@OndrejVarga_YT]

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.

[@autarchprinceps]

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.

[@Kitenge09]

Delicias, Chihuahua México is a circular city designed in the 1930’s.

[@AL5520]

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).

[@Kitenge09]

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.

[@coweatsman]

Canberra, the Capital of Australia, was planned as a circular city. Newer suburbs of the city however are designed along conventional patterns.

[@jliller]

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.

[@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.

[@AtomicSource11]

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.

[@anthonykeller5120]

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.

[@brianmombourquette2673]

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.

[@jezusbloodie]

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

[@PeterLiuIsBeast]

4:32 that Beijing metro map,is already many years old. There are already way more lines and extensions.

[@a1white]

I visited Palmanova, in Italy last year. Beautiful place and an incredible design. The central square (or hexagon) is stunning

[@kadiamaria]

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!

[@craigroaring]

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

[@JoseOnTour]

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.

[@gerrrrrit]

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

[@AmoebaInk]

I've had some concepts setting up neighborhood/villages with this layout with common areas and shops in the center to make them more walkable.

[@trvsgrant]

No mention of the Auravana Project or the Venus Project, both of whom are working on circular layouts.

[@DesertRoamerUK]

Nor Burning Man Project

[@TBH_Inc]

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!

[@y09i_]

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.

[@bananian]

Hexagon is the best

[@_Alopecoid]

I'm so happy seeing Corona, CA getting mentioned in the vid

[@autumo_]

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

[@drivingtothesouth]

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.

[@Starchild1980]

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

[@carlgemlich1657]

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.

[@seanhalvorson6671]

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.

[@dmnddog7417]

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.

[@Greenwithao]

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.

[@jbepsilon]

Yes, but are the advantages worth having triangular or parallelogram shaped plots, making buildings more expensive and inconveniently shaped?

[@benjamindasrusseltier3975]

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).

[@carolinian2009]

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.

[@DomyTheMad420]

Hasselt, Belgium. I love that city. it's so green and calm.

[@Theonewhospoke]

Delicias, Chihuahua is a circular city

[@michamegged5963]

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

[@Tsholo-qd5lj]

I haven't watched your videos in a long time, glad to see them again 😁

[@caseyjackson9062]

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.

[@elkudos6262]

Moscow, duh.

[@StephenDettling]

Any EPCOT fans here?

[@birgitvanp9264]

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

[@g0d5m15t4k3]

Thank you for explaining why Circleville is called that. I'm from the area and always wondered 😅 Also, those radial boulevards really remind me of the temporary city made each year for Burning Man called Black Rock City. They post the city layout each year. And each year, it changes very slightly to fit their growing and changing needs.

[@rohitprajapati9720]

american cant understand a roundabout how can they understand a circular city.

[@no_name4796]

Lol i read cicling as cycling. Btw, a ciclic cyclable city sounds absolutely beatiful ;-)

[@CAPAE]

​@@no_name4796City Beautiful one might say.

[@darrellking7831]

America has many roundabouts.

[@88marome]

@darrellking7831 But do US citizens understand them?

[@FlyByWire1]

@@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.

[@andrewvirtue5048]

Hexagons. Let's make it happen.

[@Swampy428]

Love the video, going to boost up Cities Skylines to try and build a circle city. Also, where did you get the poster of the St.Johns Bridge?

[@ulysseslee9541]

If count in Ring Road, Beijing has their biggest ring route, there are 5 ring route in Beijing, 2nd to 6th ring. Canberra has the axes and circle planning around the Parliament House, Adelaide has the radial roads spreadout from the CBD's ring road.

[@donabaypro6782]

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.

[@HitodamaKyrie]

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.

[@Weavileiscool]

Great timing with Lumiose City in Pokémon being circular and a new game centered around it just announced Feb 27th

[@coweatsman]

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.

[@aaronhagen6972]

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.

[@JetWarrior]

Downtown Summerlin, NV (an unofficial suburb west of Las Vegas) used to have a few of them, but there's one small radial development still there along Town Center Drive north of Summerlin Pkwy. The Summerlin Library is in the middle of of it.

[@stevegrimson9554]

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.

[@yossishalom2184]

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.

[@Eelci26]

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.

[@giantqueermess264]

around large cities on maps, ive always noticed a pattern where the bigger and more wealthy a city is, the more transport rings it has around it

[@demian_csomic_winters9484]

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.

[@FrenchUncleLou]

It's funny you made this video. A few months ago I heard about this town because of an infamous crime that occurred there, and looked more into its history. I found out what you stated about how its streets used to be laid out. I thought to myself that if they retained that lay out, it would probably be a popular tourist destination in the 21st century as a quaint small town.

[@Abdulicious_98]

I'm glad this topic is brought up cus I am so inspired by circular cities, also I've been making circular cities in Cities Skylines 2 and it always fascinates me.

[@mrmuffins951]

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

[@Playerone1287]

I watched just one video on city planning and I got recommended 10-11 videos on the same topic and they were of 6-7 different channels and i subscribed to each channel without even watching those videos This is another video of a totally new channel I didn't know so many yt channels exist on this topic I love spatial planning and city planning but never really read and watched about it This

[@ripperorb]

A modern circular city that still exists is Canberra, Australia's capital. The parts at the center part covered under the original Grithin plan still has the circular design with radiating roads. First founded in 1913.

[@MikeS29]

I live not too far from Rotonda West in Florida - the plan was halted due to changing environmental legislation. Originally, it was to have direct Gulf of Mexico access for boats. It was also used in major sports broadcasting in the 1970s "Wide World of Sports." Worth looking up!