[freewheeling unplanned thinking-out-loud ahead] I like grids... but I'm not sure why. I live at the edge of the old grid section in my town. West of me, it turns into modern non-grid. Which I don't like. But do I not like it because of the lack of grid? Or because of the new modern wall-to-wall cookie-cutter construction? I look at an old organically-grown city and it's fascinating to me; its ties to the distant pas…
Growing up in Chicago, I have a deep love of the grid. It made sense, it made navigation easy. It made addresses have real meaning. Take the address of the Vic Theater, for example: 3145 N Sheffield. It tells you just about everything you need to know. It tells you that Sheffield is a North/South street. Because it's an odd number it tells you the building is on the East side of the street. The "31" tells you it's on the thirty-one hundred block of Sheffield, which once you learn the streets, tells you it's on the block immediately south of Belmont (3200 North). The "45" tells you it's likely at the very North end of the block, because the typical Chicago block only goes up to about XX60 in addresses.
The one thing lacking is the latitude for East/West streets and the longitude for North/South street being encoded in the street name, but you could encode an address as an X,Y pair. The above example address could be: 1000 W, 3145 N.
Now I live in suburbia elsewhere in the country and street numbers are essentially meaningless, except to differentiate buildings on the same street. Which I suppose is their most basic purpose, but I'm used to addresses being useful for city-wide navigation, so it always felt a bit lacking to me.
And don't get me started on my love for and the current lack of alleys where I live now. Chicago alleys are the unsung hero of the city's layout.
Just in time edit: It was pointed that I forgot one of the most important things: the numbering system encodes distance as well. Every 100 on the grid, or one full block, is 1/8 of a mile.