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The Joy of Numbered Streets

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Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#11

Post by Animats »

SF should just name it "Chavez", as a convenience. Lots of people are named Chavez. No rush. Shorten the signs as they are routinely replaced.

Going back to "Army" would be silly, especially since the U.S. Army never had a presence on that side of town. It was all Navy near the bay. The Army was up at the Presidio.

SF has this silly thing of giving streets secondary names. Who knows where "Herb Cain Way" or "Isadora Duncan Lane" is?

Numbered streets have their own problems. In San Francisco, 4th St. and 16th St intersect near the UCSF hospital complex.

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#12

Post by flats »

galago wrote: post #8

In Northwest Portlnd, Oregon the East-west streets were originally letters. A st, B st, C st, etc. They were renamed after people but they kept the first letter, so now its Ankeny, Burnside, Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Gleason, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson... They get to have it both ways, and they could be renamed if there was a desire to do so without impeding the general purpose. (One of my joking tests to see if so…

I live in a section of Brooklyn (the "flat south section" per this fantastically detailed Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lettered_Brooklyn_aven...) in which the avenues (which run east to west, like Bogotá's calles) are lettered. Some of them, mostly early in the alphabet, were named or renamed in this same way (Albemarle, Beverly, Cortelyou, Ditmas, and so on). The streets running north/south are numbered.

(Interestingly, Avenue Q was renamed Quentin Road to avoid confusion with Avenue O.)

Either way, lettered or named in alphabetical order, I appreciate the lettered/numbered combination. It's a good mix of character and practicality, and it sounds good when you say it out loud ("It's at E 14th and K"). The doubly numbered intersections of Queens always drive me nuts.

A final sidenote: some real estate developers in the early 20th century decided to rename sections of E 11th through 16th from Prospect Park South down through West Midwood to fancy-sounding anglicized names like Stratford, Westminster, Argyle, Rugby, and Marlborough (the SWARM backronym here is useful) so they could make more money selling homes on those streets. It worked. Yet another example of nefarious street naming...

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#14

Post by riffraff »

seanhunter wrote: post #10
thebrid wrote: post #4

I find some joy in historical street naming. It's nice that you can take a 1746 map of London and pretty much still be able to get around.[1] Would certainly make life easier for time travellers. While there are advantages to grid layouts, I find they also bring a certain amount of monotony. The irregular historic street layouts of European (and some US) cities give so much more variety & make the city much more inte…

Yes. Additionally you realise the original purpose of streets (eg “love lane” in the city of London near the old guildhall is a particular favourite of mine). https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/8431660 Happens to be near "wood lane". Make of that what you will. I studied on "Silk Street" which is nearby. Nearby are also "Oat Street", "Bread Street", "Milk street", "Gutter lane", "Goldsmith street", "Poultry" and many…

The "odd" location names in London are a fun plot point in Garman's "neverwhere" novel, tho he focuses on tube stops (black friars, shepherd's bush, kings cross etc).

I like those but IME most people have no clue what old names mean, they are just sounds associated with a place most of the time.

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#15

Post by gnabgib »

riffraff wrote: post #14
seanhunter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Additionally you realise the original purpose of streets (eg “love lane” in the city of London near the old guildhall is a particular favourite of mine). https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/8431660 Happens to be near "wood lane". Make of that what you will. I studied on "Silk Street" which is nearby. Nearby are also "Oat Street", "Bread Street", "Milk street", "Gutter lane", "Goldsmith street", "Poultry" and many…

The "odd" location names in London are a fun plot point in Garman's "neverwhere" novel, tho he focuses on tube stops (black friars, shepherd's bush, kings cross etc). I like those but IME most people have no clue what old names mean, they are just sounds associated with a place most of the time.

Niel Gaiman's Neverwhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwhere_(novel)

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#16

Post by bcraven »

seanhunter wrote: post #10
thebrid wrote: post #4

I find some joy in historical street naming. It's nice that you can take a 1746 map of London and pretty much still be able to get around.[1] Would certainly make life easier for time travellers. While there are advantages to grid layouts, I find they also bring a certain amount of monotony. The irregular historic street layouts of European (and some US) cities give so much more variety & make the city much more inte…

Yes. Additionally you realise the original purpose of streets (eg “love lane” in the city of London near the old guildhall is a particular favourite of mine). https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/8431660 Happens to be near "wood lane". Make of that what you will. I studied on "Silk Street" which is nearby. Nearby are also "Oat Street", "Bread Street", "Milk street", "Gutter lane", "Goldsmith street", "Poultry" and many…

Imagine finding this in the US...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#17

Post by Modified3019 »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #7

I may be very European, and grew up in a relatively chaotic city, but I find quite confusing when I’m on a grid city. Yes, it’s sort of convenient at a rational level, but everything appears the same, and there’s no way to differentiate one cross from the next. Streets doesn’t have their own “personality” and you have to learn them by name. I don’t know half of the street names of the city I grew in, but I know where…

I did agronomy work out in Kansas for a while, which is basically a big grid of very similar crop circles. Thinking on it, there were lots of places I passed by often on the roads, but would never remember, but wherever I stopped and entered a field on foot and discovered all the little differences in terrain that made each quarter unique, I was much more able to have a better mental map of where I was, even if I was only there a few times in a year.

Could it be that you learned the chaotic city better because you were more likely to go around on foot and experience little things, rather than just driving to a box store?

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#18

Post by atoav »

Modified3019 wrote: post #17
jaimebuelta wrote: post #7

I may be very European, and grew up in a relatively chaotic city, but I find quite confusing when I’m on a grid city. Yes, it’s sort of convenient at a rational level, but everything appears the same, and there’s no way to differentiate one cross from the next. Streets doesn’t have their own “personality” and you have to learn them by name. I don’t know half of the street names of the city I grew in, but I know where…

I did agronomy work out in Kansas for a while, which is basically a big grid of very similar crop circles. Thinking on it, there were lots of places I passed by often on the roads, but would never remember, but wherever I stopped and entered a field on foot and discovered all the little differences in terrain that made each quarter unique, I was much more able to have a better mental map of where I was, even if I was…

I think this is more about the map. It is easier to remember that you have been at the crossing where that triangle street hits the half-circle road than to remember your position in an isomorphic grid, just like it is easier to know you stood next to that tree in a park (a point of interest) than to remember your exsct position in a lawn where every spot looks more or less the same as the other.

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#19

Post by adamddev1 »

I lived in Calgary for 4 years before we had smart phones w/ maps. The grid system was amazing, it was like being able to give easily processed human GPS coordinates. "Let's meet at 7th Ave and 9th Street." Done!

Re: The Joy of Numbered Streets

#20

Post by rkomorn »

adamddev1 wrote: post #19

I lived in Calgary for 4 years before we had smart phones w/ maps. The grid system was amazing, it was like being able to give easily processed human GPS coordinates. "Let's meet at 7th Ave and 9th Street." Done!

I gotta admit I used to think I just had a great sense of direction.

Then I moved back to Europe and realized it was a lie. It was just that the grid systems of the places I lived in the US were much easier to navigate.

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