Navigating in a City with Illogical Street Names

[jcb]

I live in a (small) city where the streets are named logically, by which I mean they follow the following two principles:
(1) Streets *always* run north-south, and avenues *always* run west-east.
(2) Most streets and avenues are named with numbers (3rd street) (as opposed to, uh, names (elm street)), which indicate how many blocks away they are from Oak Street and Main Avenue respectively. This makes navigating to an address easy, because one can tell from the street numbers roughly how many blocks away they are.

I took this logic for granted, and didn't realize until a few years ago that other cities have not embraced this logic. For example, take this randomly chosen section of Chicago. This section violates both of these principles:
(1) W Armitage Ave (which runs west-east) intersects N Washtenaw Ave (which runs north-south), and W Homer St (which runs west-east) intersects N Rockwell St (which run north-south).
(2) They're named with names, not numbers.

If you live in a city that hasn't embraced the logic, I have the following questions:
(1) Do "street" and "avenue" signify something else that I'm not aware of? (Maybe the width of the road?)
(2) How do you navigate when every street has a name name instead of a number name?
(3) How many of the streets with name names (elm, johnson, etc) do you actually know (name and location relative to each other) off the top of your head?
(4) Am I overestimating how useful logical road names are in the modern internet era? After all, I can't remember the last time I drove to a new place where I didn't look it up on Google Maps first. (Furthermore, people who drive with a GPS in their car have even less need to have logical street names, because the GPS handles all the navigation for them.)
(5) If you're old enough to have driven in the pre-internet era, was it more cumbersome in the past?

[bradrn]

If you live in a city that hasn't embraced the logic […]

I live in a suburb of Sydney, Australia. Some parts of the city have street layouts approaching a grid, but it’s generally irregular, and even on the rare occasions when it is, the street names aren’t necessarily related to the layout.

[…] I have the following questions:
(1) Do "street" and "avenue" signify something else that I'm not aware of? (Maybe the width of the road?)

In some situations, I might expect an ‘Avenue’ to be wider and longer than a ‘Street’, but most of the time they’re more or less synonymous.

Interestingly, the ‘Avenues’ in my area of the suburb are all minor cross-roads, and all oriented east–west. This is a sort of logic, I suppose, but I’ve never noticed it before. (And it only holds in a small area anyway.)

(2) How do you navigate when every street has a name name instead of a number name?

Well, you can navigate perfectly well by the names if you know them, Otherwise, there’s always landmarks and relative directions. Google Maps is helpful too (as are street directories if you prefer).

(3) How many of the streets with name names (elm, johnson, etc) do you actually know (name and location relative to each other) off the top of your head?

I know the name of the street I’m on, the streets continuing on from it which go to important places, and some of the cross-streets coming off these. Oftentimes I know the names of streets where friends and family live. At a larger scale, I also know the names of the major highways and roads in my area of the city.

(4) Am I overestimating how useful logical road names are in the modern internet era?

Yes, I suspect so.

(5) If you're old enough to have driven in the pre-internet era, was it more cumbersome in the past?

Too young to answer this, alas…

(For that matter, I don’t even have a driver’s license at all. I rely on public transport much of the time. I lived in Paris earlier this year, where I relied solely on public transport: I can barely remember any of the street names there, if I ever knew them at all.)

[zompist]

Chicago is a little more organized than it looks:
* Most N-S streets are avenues, most E-W streets are, um, streets.
* West of Pulaski, streets are alphabetized, for some reason going from L's to N's only.
* In the south of the city, streets are numbered.
* Also, if you think Chicago is chaos, wait till you see Boston.

If you live in a city that hasn't embraced the logic, I have the following questions:

(1) Do "street" and "avenue" signify something else that I'm not aware of? (Maybe the width of the road?)
--see above
(2) How do you navigate when every street has a name name instead of a number name?
-- You memorize the main streets. I know pretty much all the half-mile streets in Chicago, and many of the downtown streets. Then someone can tell you that they are, say, two blocks south of Armitage.
-- We have a numbering system, so if you're going to a new place that's not on a main street, you only need to learn the street it's on: the other coordinate is given by the street address.
-- You keep a street map in your car.

Also, FWIW, major entertainment and shopping destinations are usually on the main streets. It's only going to people's houses that you need directions.

Also also, we actually have a public transit system, which I generally prefer... city driving gets old.

[Ares Land]

If you live in a city that hasn't embraced the logic, I have the following questions:
(1) Do "street" and "avenue" signify something else that I'm not aware of? (Maybe the width of the road?)
(2) How do you navigate when every street has a name name instead of a number name?
(3) How many of the streets with name names (elm, johnson, etc) do you actually know (name and location relative to each other) off the top of your head?
(4) Am I overestimating how useful logical road names are in the modern internet era? After all, I can't remember the last time I drove to a new place where I didn't look it up on Google Maps first. (Furthermore, people who drive with a GPS in their car have even less need to have logical street names, because the GPS handles all the navigation for them.)
(5) If you're old enough to have driven in the pre-internet era, was it more cumbersome in the past?

I live in France, where streets and avenues don't follow any particular pattern; certainly not a grid pattern.
The American system of street orientation and naming just doesn't apply.

An avenue is typically wider and longer than a rue (='street'). A boulevard will typically follow the former city walls.

Overall I'd say the usefulness of 'logical' street names is overstated. These days of course we use Google Maps/GPS, but in the old days we used paper maps instead and it worked fine.
We used to get lost a lot while driving though!

Google Maps is a little cumbersome here, because of internationalization issues -- it's obviously designed with the US in mind. Two things come to mind:
- it will sometimes give directions relative to the cardinal points. 'Prendre la direction Nord sur la rue XXX', 'Drive North on xxx'. Absolutely useless here. I probably have no idea where North is.
- giving directions in terms of street names. Streets are never numbered here, so you can't guess the next street name. The street name is signposted if you're driving in the city, but you may not be able to read it. In rural areas it's probably not even signposted.

[bradrn]

Google Maps is a little cumbersome here, because of internationalization issues -- it's obviously designed with the US in mind. Two things come to mind:
- it will sometimes give directions relative to the cardinal points. 'Prendre la direction Nord sur la rue XXX', 'Drive North on xxx'. Absolutely useless here. I probably have no idea where North is.
- giving directions in terms of street names. Streets are never numbered here, so you can't guess the next street name. The street name is signposted if you're driving in the city, but you may not be able to read it. In rural areas it's probably not even signposted.

Somehow I never linked those particular quirks with American street naming conventions. They’ve never been particularly useful here either, because (as I said) Sydney also has few grid patterns and logical street names.

[Ares Land]

Also also, we actually have a public transit system, which I generally prefer... city driving gets old.

Oh, on giving directions in Paris. What you do is give the address, and the closest metro station. You take the metro there (checking the metro map, though after a few years, you'll probably have memorized many of the station), then check the neighborhood street map.

[Emily]

ime cities where the generic portion of the name (street, road, avenue, etc) follows a particular scheme (e.g. everything named "street" is east-west and "avenue" going north-south) are the exception rather than the rule, although nyc is certainly the most prominent city that does follow such a scheme

i have to say i'm surprised at your surprise that streets have names instead of numbers!! i don't know that i've ever been to a city where most streets were numbered, that's a new one for me. most cities in the US have numbered streets, but it's only one set: a certain grouping of north-south streets or east-west streets will be 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, but the cross streets aren't going to also be numbered. that sounds like it would get confusing. you'd have to state the generic for every single street every time you referred to it!

different cities will follow different patterns. the fact that the pattern in one city is different from the pattern in another doesn't mean either is "illogical". part of learning to navigate is learning which patterns are local and which patterns are more broadly applicable. (for example, cities in the us almost always have addresses based on block numbers, and if there are numbered streets then the perpendicular block numbers will generally correspond — the 500 block of main street will be between 5th and 6th street, the 600 block will be between 6th and 7th, etc). to answer your specific questions:

1. most generics—certainly the "big three" (road, street, avenue)—don't universally definitionally have specific meaning, although there are general tendencies: a boulevard is usually a larger and more prominent street, a lane is usually residential and usually not arterial, court and circle are usually cul-de-sacs, etc again, many cities such as yours do set specific uses, but this is strongly local
2. if you're in a familiar city, you already know where the main roads are and you can find your way from there. often cities will have patterned street naming schemes—in downtown san diego, the streets perpendicular to the numbered streets are A, B, C, etc, with the letters increasing southward (and with some having been renamed out of the scheme); north of A Street you have another series of alphabetical streets, this one having plant names: ash street, beech street, cedar street, etc
3. all the main arterial roads in the areas i drive frequently, including most of the ones with freeway off-ramps, and of course the roads i drive daily on top of that. but again, the memory load is lessened when you learn the patterns (e.g. as mentioned, the tree names in san diego are east-west streets whose names increase alphabetically as you go north, but in nearby escondido the tree names are north-south streets that increase westward)
4. yes and no. as mentioned, i think you're conflating the logic of your area with logic in and of itself. but even in places without clear alphabetical or numeric patterns like those described above, there's going to be a hierarchy of street importance that will help you get where you're going
5. yes but not as much as people make it out to be. i tend to avoid using gps unless i really don't know where someplace is and can't figure it out on my own. i still use paper maps sometimes (mostly out of stubbornness), and when i'm finding my way to a new place all i really have to look at is which exit i take off which freeway, and then maybe the last couple of turns. since i know my freeway network, i don't need to worry about that part, which miles-wise is usually the bulk of the trip

obviously this is all us-specific, i have no idea how other countries' roads are laid out and named
(e: typos)

[bradrn]

cities in the us almost always have addresses based on block numbers

Now this is something I’d never heard of. How does that work?

(Here, addresses are numbered along the roads. The most common pattern is to have even numbers on one side of the street and odd numbers on the other, so looking along some street you’d see, say: 1 Mona Vale Rd, 3 Mona Vale Rd, 5 Mona Vale Rd, etc.)

1. most generics—certainly the "big three" (road, street, avenue)—don't universally definitionally have specific meaning, although there are general tendencies: a boulevard is usually a larger and more prominent street, a lane is usually residential and usually not arterial, court and circle are usually cul-de-sacs, etc again, many cities such as yours do set specific uses, but this is strongly local

These naming conventions are interestingly different from what I see here. Over here, a ‘Lane’ is a very narrow road (a single lane). ‘Boulevards’, ‘Courts’ and ‘Circles’ are very rare. The most common names for a cul-de-sac are ‘Place’ or ‘Close’. There’s also ‘Crescent’ for curved roads, usually when both ends intersect the same cross-street.

[Ares Land]

(Here, addresses are numbered along the roads. The most common pattern is to have even numbers on one side of the street and odd numbers on the other, so looking along some street you’d see, say: 1 Mona Vale Rd, 3 Mona Vale Rd, 5 Mona Vale Rd, etc.)

French cities and towns apply the pattern you describe. In rural areas, another common scheme is to use the distance to the beginning of the road. So 1576 route du Cul de la Chouette is 1576 meters from the beginning of said road. But that's a relatively recent development. Traditionally, you just used the lieu-dit (approximately, a hamlet) name as the address (just like that: Bilbo Baggins, Bag End, (Postcode) Hobbiton) and trusted the postman to figure it out.

[Ketsuban]

How many of the streets with name names (elm, johnson, etc) do you actually know (name and location relative to each other) off the top of your head?

A few, although I'm an introvert with a bad sense of geography - more outgoing people definitely know more. I know the cul-de-sac I live on, the major road it branches off which heads towards Oxford, the road that branches in the other direction (since that's the road we walk down when we go to the pub) and the other major road you get to via the pedestrian walkway at the bottom of the road I live on (since that's the route I take to walk to the supermarket and the town centre). I used to live on a cul-de-sac that branches off the other major road, and that was a little maze of tiny roads with their own names so I knew those at that time; when I still went to the school within walking distance of my house I knew some of the other roads that branch off the major road (since they were relevant to me at the time) but I can only remember the name of one now. I also know some of the main arteries in the town itself, and the bus service to Oxford hasn't changed substantially since I was in school.

(Hopefully that's not enough information for someone to dox me. If it is and you figure it out, send me a nice postcard.)

(4) Am I overestimating how useful logical road names are in the modern internet era? After all, I can't remember the last time I drove to a new place where I didn't look it up on Google Maps first. (Furthermore, people who drive with a GPS in their car have even less need to have logical street names, because the GPS handles all the navigation for them.)

In my opinion yes, but I've never lived somewhere with a grid layout so I'm probably biased.

[xxx]

in most "historic" cities,
it's not the street names that are illogical,
it's the layout of the roads that isn't adapted to mathematical logic...

nowadays, with gps, including pedestrians on smartphones, don't care,
in the past, paper city maps were used before,
and even before that, talking to locals used to put your memory to the test
(hard to remember after two or three "take the second right, then left for a hundred meters you'll see the tower, and then right again, then..."),
but engage in further conversation with other passers-by
always happy to know you and know where you come from,
or even who you come to see...

[Raphael]

I haven't driven a car in a long time - too much time spent on medication that said "don't operate heavy machinery while taking this", and cars sound like heavy machinery to me - but I'd say when I walk somewhere, or travel somewhere by combined walking/public transportation, or sit in the passenger seat with a driver who expects me to do navigation, or, for that matter, when I was driving cars back in the day, it generally goes/went something like this:

I know some streets (no "street"/"avenue" distinction here) by name, but mostly I've memorized the looks of streets and their position relative to each other. Since we don't have a "logical" grid, that approach works a lot better than it would work in places where all the streets look the same and have the same relation to neighboring streets. So I don't really think of a street as Cloud Cuckoo Road or something, but more like "the street that goes from there to there and looks like that".

I don't know how common that approach is among people who live here, though. I myself generally have an unusually bad memory for names, and when, for instance, I make up fiction, I usually don't name the characters (except if I want to post the fiction somewhere) and just think of them, inside my head, as "the character who did this", or "the character who has those traits". So perhaps my approach to navigating streets is a result of the same effect.

I apologize for not following your specific questions more directly, jcb; I just wrote down what I could generally think of on that topic in general.

Oh, and please don't take this personally, jcb, but your original post comes across to me kind of like someone saying "I'm from a place where everyone travels by pneumatic tube, and I wonder how it's like for the people who live in those strange places where people don't travel by pneumatic tube!"

[Raphael]

and even before that, talking to locals used to put your memory to the test
(hard to remember after two or three "take the second right, then left for a hundred meters you'll see the tower, and then right again, then..."),

Yeah, on those occasions when people asked me for directions, I noticed that they usually got confused or despaired if my directions contained more than two steps. And I remember at least one time when I was walking on the sidewalk at one end of a city, and a car stopped and they asked me for directions to a place somewhere at the other end of the city.

[bradrn]

I know some streets (no "street"/"avenue" distinction here) by name, but mostly I've memorized the looks of streets and their position relative to each other. Since we don't have a "logical" grid, that approach works a lot better than it would work in places where all the streets look the same and have the same relation to neighboring streets. So I don't really think of a street as Cloud Cuckoo Road or something, but more like "the street that goes from there to there and looks like that".

This is it. I wanted to say something like this earlier, but wasn’t sure how to explain it. The key point is that the streets all look very different, so you don’t necessarily need the names.

[doctor shark]

cities in the us almost always have addresses based on block numbers

Now this is something I’d never heard of. How does that work?

(Here, addresses are numbered along the roads. The most common pattern is to have even numbers on one side of the street and odd numbers on the other, so looking along some street you’d see, say: 1 Mona Vale Rd, 3 Mona Vale Rd, 5 Mona Vale Rd, etc.)

They're numbered along the road as well, with even numbers on one side and odd on the other, but quite frequently (i.e. after a main cross street), you get to a new "block" and the numbers reset. This also means parallel streets will often have similar numbers.

For an example, I'll give where I lived in Tex-ass. Our address was in the 400-block, and, if you look, all the parallel streets have numbering from 400 upwards. My grandfather lived a bit more inland, and so his house number was 800-something, even on a different street. How the counting goes and resets, though, depends on what side of the bay you're on, but the house numbering increases towards the Oso Bay and away from Corpus Christi Bay.

(4) Am I overestimating how useful logical road names are in the modern internet era? After all, I can't remember the last time I drove to a new place where I didn't look it up on Google Maps first. (Furthermore, people who drive with a GPS in their car have even less need to have logical street names, because the GPS handles all the navigation for them.)

In my opinion yes, but I've never lived somewhere with a grid layout so I'm probably biased.

I learned to drive and navigate without a GPS, so it's habit for me to look up the route, then look for street names and use those for navigation.

[bradrn]

cities in the us almost always have addresses based on block numbers

Now this is something I’d never heard of. How does that work?

(Here, addresses are numbered along the roads. The most common pattern is to have even numbers on one side of the street and odd numbers on the other, so looking along some street you’d see, say: 1 Mona Vale Rd, 3 Mona Vale Rd, 5 Mona Vale Rd, etc.)

They're numbered along the road as well, with even numbers on one side and odd on the other, but quite frequently (i.e. after a main cross street), you get to a new "block" and the numbers reset. This also means parallel streets will often have similar numbers.

For an example, I'll give where I lived in Tex-ass. Our address was in the 400-block, and, if you look, all the parallel streets have numbering from 400 upwards. My grandfather lived a bit more inland, and so his house number was 800-something, even on a different street. How the counting goes and resets, though, depends on what side of the bay you're on, but the house numbering increases towards the Oso Bay and away from Corpus Christi Bay.

Interesting, thanks! I guess I can see the attraction.

I can’t think of anything like that over here, though. Most of the time (if not always), house numbers start from 1 at one end of the street, and continue upwards for as long as necessary. Apparently the numbering is the responsibility of the local council, so very long roads can get repeated numbering. (It may even be the case for short streets which happen to cross a boundary, but I can’t find any unambiguous examples.)

[Ares Land]

I know some streets (no "street"/"avenue" distinction here) by name, but mostly I've memorized the looks of streets and their position relative to each other. Since we don't have a "logical" grid, that approach works a lot better than it would work in places where all the streets look the same and have the same relation to neighboring streets. So I don't really think of a street as Cloud Cuckoo Road or something, but more like "the street that goes from there to there and looks like that".

This is it. I wanted to say something like this earlier, but wasn’t sure how to explain it. The key point is that the streets all look very different, so you don’t necessarily need the names.

Same here!

I memorize some street names, but often I remember landmarks instead (town hall, train station, and so on), and where giving, I don't know, the location of a restaurant for instance, I'll refer to the closest landmark.

[alice]

Where I come from, you just *know* that the logical order is Hugh Miller Place, Rintoul Place, Colville Place, Collins Place, Balmoral Place, Dunrobin Place, Teviotdale Place, Avondale Place, Kemp Place, Bell Place, and that before all of these comes Reid Terrace. You don't need street numbers!

[Torco]

santiago has no logic vis a vis street names: what's even worse, the same street changes name randomly as you go along its length: for example the main street, if there's one, is variously called, as you go from its west to its east endpoints, pajaritos, alameda, providencia and then apoquido. most important streets have this feature. additionally, some streets you measure your position within it through regular old numeration (for example, morandé 107) and others, especially further from downtown, people speak to you about which 'paradero' or bus station something is (as in the 29th bus station of vicuña mackenna). from the name of a street you get exactly zero information if you don't know the street itself, so people will often say things like "i live in acacia street 251, this is near the intersection of the lions and bilbao")

1 avenida here basically means bigger street.
2 you either know them, or you're referred to the nearest intersection between known streets. just yesterday i was walking somewhere downtown and i asked some random guy "yo, i'm looking for morandé street". it was two blocks down. people from here just know most big streets, so as to use the intersection trick, and people from outside of town just ask about the closes metro station.
3 oh, boy... possibly a thousand? it becomes tiered: i absolutely know where general velazques with alameda is, i have a vaguer notion of where bremen street is (the bremen in ñuñoa, of course, there's a lot more bremens in other boroughs) and some of the streets i know I merely can pinpoint their position to as much as five or seven kilometers of error.
4 i mean... no? viña del mar, for example, has some grid-and-number system, and i'm told it's trivial to go somewhere you haven't gone before by car. it's a cool thing, it's just not mandatory: people get used to the, as you put it, illogical names.
5 before google maps? it was a bitch to get anywhere you hadn't gotten to before: you'd use the phone book maps, roll down your windows and ask people, or just ask for a sequence of instructions instead of a position. often you'd be given a path that's totally suboptimal but more comprehensible or easier to put into words.

More: show

this is unironically how i'd give directions to a former job i had before i could just send a location pin.

- okay, so where is (place where meeting will happen)
- you know your way around huechuraba?
- nope, not at all
- okay, where you coming from?
- providencia
- good: then what you need to do is take los leones to the north all the way till you get to the tunnel. then you go through the tunnel, past the big graveyard that reads "cementerio parque del recuerdo", past a big roundabout, past the overpass over el salto street. take no exits until you see the big blue store, you can't miss it. if you run into a big mall you've gone past and need to go back
- mmmm okay, los leones, tunnel, big blue building
- right, *then* you take pedro fontova exit and keep right into a street called pedro fontova. it's a big street, you'll pass two gas stations. after the second you need to start to look out, on your left hand there'll be a strip mall and on your right like an entrance to a gated community, except the gate is always open.
- oookay
- if you start seeing car repair shops you've gone past. when you go inside the gate, it is yellow, then you go in and look for a street called cacique chileno sur. it's a different street from cacique chileno norte, mind you. if you run into a big school you've gone past and need to return. the house is red.

- what if I'm coming from independencia instead?
- oooh, then it's much easier: you take recoleta north all the way until it meets vespucio, go across vespucio and you'll be in pedro fontova. then pass the blue thing, the gas stations, and look out for the strip mall and the gate. it'll take you like 30 more minutes tho.

- what if i'm coming from maipú?
- theeeen you need to take vespucio as if you were going to quilicura, you know the way?
- yeah
- except you don't take the quilicura exit, you instead go through until pedro fontova
- and then blue thing, gas stations, stripmall?
- exactly!

most public transit instructions are much simpler: "get off in x subway station, board bus y, look out for street z and when you see it ring the bell and get off"

[xxx]

in 3SDL, a name/word must be a definition...
a street name will be defined in terms of remarkable points, which can also be defined...

in fact, this is the case for many old streets,
so logical and a priori is man's nature...
when meaning and not labeling was most common,
before the proliferation of uninteresting streets inhabited by uninteresting people...

can you give a "3SDL name" for the street where you live...