Within the last century the need for small blocks declined with the invention of the automobile. Larger city blocks have been developed to produce fewer intersections which allow vehicles to drive at a greater speed. Some areas of a city have larger blocks within a small block pattern. This might mean that there has been a recent development in an older frame. Individual streets have been altered over time.
Older streets are normally more narrow that newer ones.
Today s streets are developed with the understanding that they might need to be widened if the area becomes a highly traveled area. Most of the roads with high traffic volume are made of a higher quality paving compared to secondary and rural streets. The unpaved rural roads remain unpaved because they are not used enough to demand pavement. Curbs and sidewalks along a street could appear and then disappear depending on when the street was constructed. Most cities have at least two street patterns that merge into each other and many variations of these patterns.