A case for smaller street blocks

On a recent walk with my dog, I remembered a benefit of smaller block faces (i.e. length of a block):  they give you more direct routes, especially if you're caught in the rain!

I left the house with Miss L (my dog Loretta) amidst cloudy skies, but I assumed the rain was over.  Five minutes later, I became a victim of wishful weather thinking ("Surely the rain's over now.") and 1950s suburban street design (the era when most of my neighborhood was built).  Current Charlotte-Mecklenburg subdivision regulations (pg. 24) have smaller blocks on the books (see below), but this wasn't the case when my house and neighborhood were built in 1955.

As for my walk, my route (magenta line, image at bottom) started on Westchester Blvd. (1,089' block face), made a right onto Dresden Dr. East (400' block face), and about midway up Roanoke Ave. (1,363' block face) - the sky opened up with rain!  I ran up the remainder of Roanoke Ave., making a right onto Woodland Dr. (421' block face) and a quick right back onto Westchester Blvd and up to my house.  As I toweled off the dog, I thought, "If those blocks weren't so long, I might be little drier right now."

What IF the neighborhood had been built, or is eventually redeveloped, with a finer street grid of smaller blocks?  Looking at the grid, extending Brighton Dr. to Optimist Ln. (dashed yellow line, center of image at bottom) would make sense from a connectivity and walkability standpoint.  While current subdivision regulations require new development to have smaller blocks, there's more of challenge to retrofitting older suburban areas of the city in terms of street grids and block sizes.  Renovating an existing home or infilling new homes lot by lot is one thing, but changing street connectivity is another.  Still, models for smaller blocks exist right next to our current large ones.

In fact, my neighborhood has a nicely-scaled block (top right of image) between Norland Rd. (380' block face), Roanoke Ave. (730' block face) and Woodland Dr. (477' block face).  Next time the weather's cloudy, that's the block where I'm taking Miss L for a walk!