Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads. Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.
Lower Manhattan has plenty of nooks and crannies. My father had a secret street that he would park on when he needed to visit Battery Park City. It was a little-known street maybe one or two blocks long that was perfectly legal to park on but that hardly anyone knew about because it didn't go anywhere. I went with him a few times, and we were the only car to park there.
Plenty of nooks and crannies can be found, even in grids. There are always irregularities and sacred cows to be worked around.
Also, Chicago has a lot of nice nooks and crannies. Including an ordinance that requires that a cattle path be maintained through some of its downtown skyscrapers, and an old barn at the end of an alley.
It isn't about whether the roads are in a grid or full of nooks and crannies per se, but that the city itself wasn't planned around the existence of the automobile, either deliberately or because the automobile didn't exist yet.
A good example of this is parking minimums, which make Manhattan-style density literally impossible in places like the SFBay.
The big thing about Manhattan isn’t that its built in a grid, but that the shopping/offices/living are all mixed together. People are coming and going all day long. A lot of suburbs are like deserts.
Still, the ratio of people to cars is striking when visiting from more suburban areas. Many places seem like a sea of cars and pedestrians are very out of place.
Yeah Robert Moses had a big influence, but there are still some areas that are more like what the article describes. They just tend to be little pockets off the beaten path that you almost have to stumble into.
