The road network in Windsor, Ontario is a grid system with elongated blocks, generally aligned with the Detroit River, with East-West roads running parallel to it, and North-South streets running perpendicular (90 Degrees) to it. This is an adoption from when French Canadian settlers first built farms and streets in the area. Many streets have French names in result, such as Lauzon Parkway, Marentette Avenue (a quiet residential street), Ouellette Avenue (considered by many Windsorites to be its "Main Street"), and Pelissier Street. The current street system of Windsor (grid with elongated blocks) reflects the French method of agricultural land division where the farms were long and narrow, fronting along the river (this originates from French methods of tax collection, with more taxes being paid by propertyowners with waterfront properties, thus why riverfront lots were usually narrow).
Introduction
Most of the city is uniform in its grid, but a few neighbourhoods have their own system. Forest Glade and The Villages of Riverside were built recently (in the 1960s and 1970s, and have circular patterns, while Sandwich has its own grid roughly 45 degrees off from the rest of the city, in a triangle from Huron Church Road and the Detroit River, south to Tecumseh Road and Prince Road. This is due to the river turning southwest-ward just west of the Ambassador Bridge. Another major part of the city where the streets "jog" across Tecumseh Road is Fountain Bleu, when Tecumseh Road was the former city limit with the former Township of Sandwich South until the 1960s.
Highway 401[1] skirts the City Limits from Provincial Rd (exit 14). to Cabana West/Todd Lane (exit 6), and enters the city in the far west end to Ojibway Pkwy. (exit 1). Dougall Parkway is a former spur of Highway 401 and is a limited access freeway between the 401 and Howard Avenue. Just north of Howard Avenue before it becomes Dougall Avenue.
Campbell Avenue/Dominion Boulevard (originally intended to become a freeway in the 1970s as a spur route from E.C. Row into downtown, anti-freeway sentiments by downtown and west side residents and businesses killed it)
