Metric Analysis of Superblock Street Network Designs: Implications for Supporting Non-motorized Travel and Land Use Planning Strategies

A common urban development strategy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is based on the use of superblocks. Superblocks are large tracts of land, with sides of approximately 900 × 600 m, developed following the principles of Perry's Neighborhood Planning Unit. Several street network designs are used to structure the superblocks, creating different connectivity and accessibility conditions for their occupants. This paper evaluates these networks, to better understand their potential to support non-motorized movement and to outline land use planning strategies. Eight superblock network designs are evaluated by measuring distances in meters between a controlled set of origins and destinations. Origins correspond to residential plots of each superblock, while selected locations on their periphery correspond to potential non-residential destinations. Results indicate that the various designs studied provide relatively similar metric accessibility conditions between origins and destinations, despite having markedly different network designs. However, results also indicate that, given their geometric properties, accessibility is distributed unevenly between some superblock edges and corners. Lastly, the study indicates that the length of the different road networks plays no significant role in enhancing access to potential destinations. The paper concludes with a discussion about the ability of these results to inform urban development policy. Particularly with regards to the development of neighborhoods built using aggregations of superblocks and the role of the street networks in structuring movement, supporting land use planning, and their development costs.