The Beautiful Hidden Logic of Cities by Erin Davis shows the streets of various cities in the United States color coded by suffix - (street, road, avenue, etc).
From where I've lived there seemed to be a clear logic to streets, avenues, boulevards and others. In my mind minor city streets are streets, avenues are wide long arteries and boulevards are even wider, often with a median. Roads are suburban versions of avenues while drives, ways and lanes are suburban versions of streets (except in northwest Philadelphia where lanes are strangely like avenues). However it turns out that other cities have a very different arrangement. Where I live now there are tiny streets called "avenues"-that just seems wrong to me! The example above from Chicago shows that outside of the downtown areas most of the north-south streets are avenues while the east-west streets alternate between streets and avenues.
Cleveland In 50 Maps shows a clear logic there-all avenues run east-west while streets run north-south. The Buffalo book shows how avenues tend to be further out from the city center, named in a later time period to sound fashionable. This example from the Detroit book is closer to my understanding.
The Hidden Logic project shows examples of various cities and has a Github link where you can make a map of your favorite area. I have not had a chance to try this out yet. This detail of Manhattan from the New York map shows how as settlement moved northwards, a regular pattern of north-south avenues (blue) and east-west streets (yellow) developed. Across the river in Queens the pattern is reversed.
Houston is pretty much all streets until you get out by the beltway.
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