41–50 of 66 posts
I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to use GPS coordinates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My UK-centric view of addresses caused me an unnecessary and unpleasant 3kms walk, backpack-laden, in high summer Sydney heat back in 2003. Turns out “100 Some Road” can exist in multiple contiguous suburbs here in Australia. The numbering for the road re-starts at a suburb boundary! Who knew? This means that, upon exiting a train station and seeing number 2, 4, 6... to your left, you can’t walk left and find the 100…
Many parts of the US are the same. Even worse: there are areas in the Chicago suburbs (I presume other cities' suburbs too) where since a town boundary runs down the middle of the street, the numbering on opposite sides of the street are actually going in different directions, because they are relative to two different town numbering systems. O.o
And, even within a town, it's not unusual for streets to change name a couple times in the course of a few miles. And towns reuse street names all the time--especially for things like Main Street.
When I was living in Japan, the most confusing thing was that most roads, except large ones, didn't have names. People would either draw me a map to show me how to get somewhere or literally take me there.
And half the time, if there is a street name marker, it isn't actually the street name. It's the chome that the street is butting up against.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're describing as "American" is official standard in Sweden, ie: > Kungsgatan 10 A LGH 1301 King's street 10, staircase A, apartment 1302 which means third floor (10 being ground, 01 being basement), then second apartment counting clockwise, meaning it could be on your right if there are just two per floor.
That's not "American". The house number comes first in the US, e.g. > 10 Main Street Apt# 150 Which frankly just looks weird. At least the Scandinavian standard has them in a sensible order. In Denmark it could be: > Bredgade 10, 3. th On Wide Street 10, 3rd floor, on the right (th being short for 'til højre'; others being mf (midt for; middle) and tv (til venstre; on the left) -- if more than three on the same floor…
We have two countrywide address encoding systems that encode the address as a strict hierarchy, but both fail to encode the legal address of one of our customers, which is something like "1500m down the dirt road starting at the 27th km of the TownFoo-TownBar road". No house number, no street name, no town name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And half the time, if there is a street name marker, it isn't actually the street name. It's the chome that the street is butting up against.
Chome?
In short, addressing and geocoding is a hard problem and there are lots of weird edge cases. The web is full of broken assumptions about addresses, post codes, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many parts of the US are the same. Even worse: there are areas in the Chicago suburbs (I presume other cities' suburbs too) where since a town boundary runs down the middle of the street, the numbering on opposite sides of the street are actually going in different directions, because they are relative to two different town numbering systems. O.o
This and problems like this are rampant in New England which is mostly covered by a lot of smaller towns (with a few large cities of course). Basically everything usually resets at a town boundary. Sometimes the name changes. Sometimes it doesn't. But numbers almost always reset. And, even within a town, it's not unusual for streets to change name a couple times in the course of a few miles. And towns reuse street na…
You say that as if it was a bad thing. This idea that a "street" is a line on the map, and whether there is actually asphalt at that spot is yet to be defined -- this is a very strange idea to me. If I get to the right street, I expect to be able to follow it until I get to the correct address. Streets with gaps in them don't work so well for this.
Yes, if the city is laid out in a rectangular grid, that has its advantags, too. But I just want to point out a different way to look at things.
(European perspective.)