itineraries

ITINERARIES. It is important to remember that the organizational logic of any given urban system is not identical to the logic of its form. What this means is that the analysis of form alone does not yield the decisive characteristics of urban organization. This is made clear in the above pair of diagrams that trace habitual paths of movement, or ‘itineraries’. We can proceed with a mapping of itineraries by locating six destinations marked by the small circles on the diagram. These small circles represent individual destinations. With regard to gridiron urbanism there exists a near-infinite number of paths that connect any of the six destinations. If each destination represents home, office, school, market, then the daily routines are always variable. This diagram of gridiron itineraries is meant to contrast with the itineraries generated by the cul-de-sac. To this end, the same six destinations are drawn on top of the cul-de-sac infrastructure. As opposed to the infinite number of routes or circuits created between the six locations on the grid, the cul-de-sac drastically reduces the connections between the six centers. Any connecting path must move several levels back up the hierarchy, often returning to a primary axis (such as an urban freeway) before descending again to one of the specific locations. Unlike the infinite number of itineraries between all possible points on the grid, the points on the closed system allow only a single connection between any two points. This drastic reduction of choice from near infinity to one measures the effect, not of what was built and demolished, but of everything was never built.