Manhattan Metric 2

In the previous post we saw use of the program Galton that maps out on city streets how far you can travel in 10 or 20 minutes. Displayed on a rectangular array of streets and avenues, square or rectangular regions develop, as walking is constrained to follow the paths of the gridded streets.

The image above is a Google Earth view of the parking lot of an office building in Maryland. Commuters have parked their cars to enter a building just off the image at the lower left. They must follow perpendicular paths and walk between the cars and/or along the lanes to enter the building. But to minimize the distance of the walk, most have parked along lines of equal distance from the bottom left according to the Manhattan or city block metric. A few stragglers don't fit this pattern, perhaps wanting to protect their cars from door dings or just get a little extra exercise. But the prominent pattern in the image above is one quadrant of the rectangular 'circle' of the city block metric.

 This line graphic from Taxicab Geometry.