As the City of Redmond continues developing Overlake into an urban center, one of the things that comes with the work is new streets within Overlake Village.

According to the city website, the area’s transportation system is “built on a suburban model of big blocks and few streets.” This system limits motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists to use only a few streets, which contributes to traffic and congestion and less direct trips. To address this issue, the city’s Overlake Neighborhood Plan “calls for a finer street grid as properties redevelop,” which will “take shape over a number of years as property owners redevelop their properties,” the website states. The website continues, stating that the first parts of the new grid are under construction at Esterra Park, the first major urban mixed-use redevelopment in Overlake Village.

The new streets, which will vary in length, will run west to east from 148th Avenue Northeast to 156th Avenue Northeast and north to south from just southwest of Northeast 31st Street to Northeast 20th Street.

Jeff Churchill, a senior planner for the city, said the themes running through all of the new street names will be innovation, technology, creativity and diversity.

The north-south streets will be named after artists, anchored by Da Vinci Avenue for the artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci. The remaining north-south streets are named for artists Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas, Louis Jean Lumière, Alexander Calder, Martha Graham and Rabindranath Tagore.

The west-east streets will be named for technology innovators, anchored by Turing Street, named for Alan Turing, widely regarded as the father of computer science. The remaining west-east streets will be named after technology innovators Abū ‘Alī al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham, Yvonne Madelaine Brill, Grace Hopper and Shen Kuo.

Collectively, the street names represent people who have lived in five different centuries and in eight countries on three continents.

“They’re all very interesting people,” Churchill said.

He added that the streets are literal intersections of where art meets technology, which is how they view the Overlake neighborhood. The street names are meant to enhance Overlake Village’s character and sense of place, the website states.

According to the website, over time, the city will integrate elements of these individuals’ names and stories into the fabric of the village itself and street signs will be installed as new streets are constructed, beginning with new streets in the Esterra Park development.