Pre-Modern Urban Design and Modern Architecture?

The urban tracé of Copacabana, my home neighborhood, displays a kind of clear thinking we seem to have consigned to oblivion: it is made of roads parallel to the sea and perpendicular to the sea.
The result is an invisible presence and a full connection to the site. Squeezed between the sea and the hills, perpendicular roads head either to the sea or to the hills. 
Another interesting detail is that the urban plan is pre-modern, but it was filled with mostly modern architecture, an experiment to be examined, since while modern architecture has its advantages and disadvantages, modern urban design is a perfect disaster.

​Maybe this model could be a way to accommodate the positive side of modern architecture? 
​