When I was small and played 'Sim City' I used to think it was really artificial and created very unnatural cities, then I visited the US for the first time and realised that no they really do have grid layouts with hundreds and hundreds of cross-roads with lights and really do have 'zones' like that and it's pretty accurate for the US!

Salt Lake city literally has an indexed grid around the Mormon Temple - it's kind of amazing. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/plat-of-zion/

What would be a natural grid layout?

Sort of like central Stockholm [1], where the grid is warped to respect natural barriers?

[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Stockholm%2C%20Sw...