Driving around in neighborhoods that are laid out in nice, even 90 degree grids, they’re usually planned so that some streets have all the front doors facing them, and then the street going sideways to that street gets the views of side windows, fences, alley turnoffs, etc.
Is there a name for which street is what?
What’s the name for this field? Urban planning?
a street with the sides of the houses is a ‘side street’.
Modern urban planners sometimes refer to “A streets” and “B streets,” but otherwise I’ve never heard a real name for them. Perhaps “cross streets.”
In postwar planning practice—now sometimes derided as conventional suburban development— there’s a hierarchy of arterial-collector-local. Most residential lots are designed to front onto local streets, meaning that you see lots of fencing when driving along collectors and especially along arterials.
Hey, thanks, the aptly named Mr Downtown - part of my problem was I didn’t have specific enough search words to plug into Google. Thank you for some additional vocab! 
So, I’ll bump this one up, just this once, so the Monday-morning crowd can weigh in after the late-Friday/weekend posters, and then, I’ll let this thread sink and die like the dead weight I assumed it was …
If you only see the BACKS of the houses, with the doors facing the street “behind,” then you’re talking about an alley.
The whole idea of placing houses along a street is to give them an identifier. Local convention will determine the numbering, which will then be associated with the street name. For houses located at the intersection of two streets, the protocol is to assign it to the street where the front door faces.
Addresses are used for mail purposes, and of course, so you can give your friends directions as to where you live. Legal descriptions are based upon the subdivision which created the blocks and lots. And then there’s the Assessor’s Parcel Number, which is the money maker for the local governments.
~VOW
Yup. In dense older Montreal neighbourhoods, like mine, there are no such streets because all streets have houses facing onto them, with alleys running behind the rows of houses facing the commercial streets and between the backs of the rows that face the longer streets. Sample: here.
But the OP is: what name is used for the category of streets such as Rue Holt and Rue Dandurand, which are along the short faces of the block?
The typical Chicago block, for example, is 330 x 660 feet, consisting of 25x125 foot lots whose short side faces “avenues.” The corner lots, which have exposure along the “streets” as well, generally had larger buildings, which have a tavern or grocery on the corner and a small apartment building with a side entrance facing the “street.” Nearly all residences are entered (and addressed from) the “avenues.” My understanding of the OP is what the “streets” are called in such a layout.
No, because Holt and Dandurand don’t have “side windows, fences, alley turnoffs” – as I said, buildings front onto them too, as you can see. I was contrasting between older neighbourhoods as here, where all the streets have building frontage, and the types of suburban developments as you mentioned above.
Here, from a more recently developed area, is a better idea of what he was talking about. 49e Avenue has frontage, and Rue Acadia doesn’t.