Charlotte, North Carolina, is in the process of

Charlotte, North Carolina, is in the process of adopting connectivity requirements, including deciding how long the city’s blocks can be. The government is “getting tremendous pressure from the development community on the block dimension issues,” says Dan Burden, senior urban designer at the Glatting Jackson in Orlando, Florida, which is advising the city. Burden is trying to persuade officials to insist on small blocks. “The best historic city patterns make use of mostly 400-by-200-foot blocks, with some flexibility in areas demanding an occasional set of blocks 100 to 200 feet longer,” he says.