My very first map, modern-day urban city WIP

[owlman142]

Hello! This is my very first map I've made, and I would like some critique on it. The three things that I would like to know are A. How realistic is the layout for a planned modern city?, B. What should the scale be and C. just general help. Thanks in advance.

[Azélor]

There are some striking similarities with New York city in the general layout: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13....9948&layers=H

It does not feel very natural. I did try to make city maps in the past and I know it's not easy.

Crossroads with a small angle is not common and not practical either. Unless it's just for the sake of joining too streets that could not join otherwise.
Even if there are some exceptions, American cities are mostly following the grid with minimal distortions. It mean most streets will form 90 degrees angles. Eventually, the orientation of the streets can change however. They tend to follow the geography or the major elements such as railroads and possibly highways. Railroads probably have more impact on the city layout because they where built before the city (mostly) and the city had to adapt. Highways where built more recently from inside the city. Building need to be demolished. Building an highway is like destroying everything between point A and point B. Just to say that the impact on the layout is smaller.

[owlman142]

So how could I improve the layout?

[gilgamec]

If you're going for a North American-style city, I think the first thing you should do is consolidate the grid systems; the current map has half a dozen different grids which don't really line up where they meet. How does traffic get from the northwest to the southwest grid, when there aren't many intersections? If you consolidate the grids into one system, then other roads (parallel to the river, around hills, or so on) can be exceptions to the grid, but at most places the streets will line up.

I'd probably make the grid either straight north-south aligned, or parallel to the east-west road (which is a main national road?). The latter has the advantage that it's largely perpendicular to the river, so you can have avenues parallel to the river without too much interference with the grid.