Town Planning in Practice by Raymond Unwin, 1909

Terminate your vista. Jane Jacobs shares the same sage advice as Raymond Unwin did 40 years earlier. Sites created by intersections like those from Unwin’s illustration above are great spots for landmark structures - statuary, civic buildings, churches, or even an attractively landscaped moment. Streets do not need to appear to continue on endlessly if you terminate and interrupt them well.

Kevin Lynch, contemporaneous to Jacobs, provides the the research and language for describing such a moment where two of the five elements of The Image of the City occur:

• Path
• Landmark (or substitute a Node)

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck return to such concepts in Suburban Nation, where they discuss TND and other takes on The New Urbanism, noting how modern traffic engineering has made such intersections illegal. This makes it impossible to replicate a plan, such as John Nolen’s Mariemont, Ohio:

Mariemont, Ohio

I hope to get a few pictures of Mariemont the next time I’m down in nearby Norwood. But, even here in plan, you can see the streets interrupted by an important node at the town center. Note the civic buildings with their large lots - especially the Town Hall south of this node. Nolen sure could terminate a vista.