source: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15uz539/city_street_network_orientation/
From the post:
Urban spatial order: street network orientation, configuration, and entropy
By: Geoff Boeing
This study examines street network orientation, configuration, and entropy in 100 cities around the world using OpenStreetMap data and OSMnx.
See full paper: https://appliednetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1007/s41109-019-0189-1
Is there an advantage to having a city’s grid be perfectly oriented along NSEW? I get that if a city has a coast or waterfront, you’d want to align the grid with that, but would it mess anything up if a city’s grid were rotated like 15 degrees clockwise?
In America, it makes it line up with existing lots. Remember that the homestead act gave a lot of people 40 acres, and those lots were oriented properly. A lot of American cities were built around those lots.
There’s a concept called street canyons that deals with the region’s prevailing winds and sunlight. Might end up with your very own Manhattenhenge.
Honestly why would the rotation matter at all? Not like the connecting roads are perfectly straight without curves either.