Maybe disorder can be okay..

After looking at the streets of New York in my first blog post, I was reminded of a family vacation in Vietnam a few summers ago. In Vietnam, my parents taught me the art of street crossing.

In Vietnam, the streets is an endless river of motorcycles, vans, cars, and scooters. There are no lanes. Pedestrian crossing and traffic lights are a rare sight- if you want to cross the street, you just have to close your eyes, walk, and hope for your life you don't get hit. When you do cross, it's quite amazing, traffic just happens to magically move around you. :P



Some images comparing and contrasting the organization of traffic from two different sides of the world:

organized, simplistic [VS] disorder, confusion

... where would YOU choose to shop?

Piet Mondrian painted this piece entitled "Broadway Boogie Woogie" (left) representing the restless motion of the citylife.

It's interesting the way he decides to boldly represent the city with strict grid-like horizontal and diagonal lines.

After viewing a map of New York City (right), the viewer can see why Mondrian decided to represent the city in the way he did; streets criss-cross in a never ending fashion.

Why are the streets of New York created this way? Space efficiency?
...To be able to drive down the street and predict that the next intersection is exactly 400 meters away from this intersection?
.. and that the intersection after that is exactly 400 meters away?
... and that the intersection after that is exactly 400 meters away?