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Wait what? Streets run north-south but they increase going north? To me, "running north-south" would mean that one street stretches from the north end of the city to the south end, and every subsequent street is parallel, thus the numbering would increase going east to west...(in other words, they look like this: |||... )

That said, in Manhattan, streets run east-west, or rather crosstown (i.e. from the East River to the Hudson River), and numbering increases as you go north. Avenues run north-south, or uptown-downtown, with the numbered avenues increasing from east to west (there are of course other streets and avenues that are not numbered, such as most of downtown Manhattan, as well as Broadway, Lexington Ave, Park Ave, etc. My favorite is Alphabet City, so named because they comprise Avenue A, Avenue B, Avenue C, and Avenue D)

Oh, god, that reminds me of the time, probably around 10 years ago, when my sister went to a school friend's house and we had to pick her up... trouble was, it was in this relatively new development: http://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=55.906897, ... 16&vpsrc=6 , where not only is the layout chaotic, but every street is called Buckstone, with the variation being in the suffix to the street name. Of course, my dad hadn't thought that the second part of the street name would be particularly important (because it generally isn't) and promptly forgot it (he remembered "12 Buckstone something" or whatever the number was), meaning that we had to go to the same number on every street until we found the right house....

(A few years later, I was happy to discover that someone had painted over the B in Buckstone on the main road, Buckstone Terrace, to look like an F...)

Also, Cathbad raised an important point about navigation in Edinburgh, namely that you can usually see where you want to go from far away because there are a lot of hills and other prominent landmarks like the castle in particular, which I know isn't the case in other cities a lot of the time. York had the Minster, which was a prominent tall cathedral that loomed above everything else, so it worked there too sometimes, despite it being flat. I think one of the reasons I find Leith difficult to navigate is that you can't see the castle or any other prominent landmarks, except the tallest hill, Arthur's Seat, and then only occasionally, because it's just slightly too far away.

In regards to the bit on theme naming "Ave. A-D", Lawrence, the local college town has streets named for US states in order of admission to the Union up to Oregon (the state before Kansas). Other than with Mass. (its main street), navigation is left to remembering what the fuck state came in after, say, Alabama. My hometown does the same thing for US Presidents up to Garfield. There's also a place out in Suburbia with a development with street names like "King Arthur's Ct." and other groaners.

[Edit: Damn autocorrect.]

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I went to Belfast a couple times and noticed that in many of the places we went, you could see the two incredibly massive yellow cranes -- Samson and Goliath, I believe they're called -- looming over the shipyards. I didn't spend that long in Belfast though, and we were mostly in one part of the city.

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George Corley
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I think s/he meant that addresses increase on streets northwards and westwards on avenues? So that 4223 3rd St is north of 1782 3rd St. I'm never quite observant enough to confirm it, but I think it works similarly in Manhattan—and, say, odd numbered addresses are usually on the same side of any street/avenue? Maybe?


In a similar vein, there's a series of streets in Austin named after the major rivers in Texas, running in geographical order, Rio Grande to Red River.

Aha, that would make sense. I guess I was thinking of "street numbers" as which street you're on and "house numbers" or "building numbers" as the address...that's a random quirk of the language...

If that is the case, then Manhattan has a similar pattern but with streets and avenues reversed, so building numbers increase as you go west (streets) and north (aves).

A lot of cities here, and Edinburgh & York could serve as good examples, are sort of radial, with a town centre and roads coming into the centre fanning outwards. Usually things are numbered from 1 upwards on one side and 2 upwards on the other side with odd & even on opposite sides (when streets break that particular pattern it gets very confusing), and the lowest number tends to be at the end closest to the town centre. But that's just a rough tendency and can be broken a lot (and also some run parallel to the town centre and don't have either end closer).

I think the numbering is different in America, in that you tend to have house numbers in the 1000s, and there tends to be some sort of correlation with the number of street/avenue perpendicular to the block your house is on. Am i right?

In any case we rarely have house numbers higher than a few hundred, and that's only for very long roads! Numbers in the 1000s are exceedingly rare.

Yeah, often a block will be a whole century. You might go from 1422 Lark Ct right to 1500 Lark Ct. I associate this with residential neighborhoods especially. In city centers buildings might simply be numbered.

Although I found it not too difficult to find my way around Braunschweig, what did confuse me was the numbering of houses in streets that had a connection to the Ring. It did it this way, which made it easy to miss the house you were looking for, I think:



This was confusing because I'm used to the zigzag numbering Finlay's already mentioned above. Though in the road I'm currently living on, this numbering scheme is really stupid because there's about 20 numbers difference towards the end of the road, so that opposite to number 53, where I live, is number 74.

That reminds me -- I live in a small town in the States, and one thing that has happened is that lot numbers tend to "jump ahead" due to lots being bought out and merged over the years to build bigger houses.

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George Corley
Producer and Moderating Host, Conlangery Podcast

But that's more of a general European thing, no?

In Slovenia, this is the case generally for streets that are called ulica or cesta. But for "squares" (called trg, or sometimes ploščad or whatever), the numbering is always simply sequential (1, 2, 3... on one side, etc.). This is fine if the square is, well, square, but some "squares" are indistinguishable from streets, so you have to know the "bit after" in order to find your way around the house numbers at all.

Apartment block neighborhoods are a whole other can of worms - buildings belonging to a certain "street" may be arranged rather randomly around a small park or something, making it even more difficult to find anything at the micro-level.

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Yeah. But I'm just saying that the cities i've lived in are good examples of the radial structure.

I wonder if there are any major advantages of grid versus concentric style layouts. I suppose the grid type is probably easier if the primary means of transportation is cars.

What about Asia? That hasn't been mentioned much. From what I've heard, they have even more dense cities. Why is that? Is it just very new cities, or is there some old tradition involved?


That all makes sense, except, before cars? I would have thought by the time cars became common, the US would already have pretty much caught up with Europe in terms of urbanisation.

And what's this about the rich people living near the centre in Europe and far from the centre in the US? Is that also to do with the cars - being far away doesn't suck as much if you have a car?

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Not quite, I don't think. Particularly not in the interior.

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In Seattle, things are generally grid-like, but there are lots of separate grids which come into each other at separate angles. So things can get a bit funny. More than that, the city is built like an isthmus, and all the major streets run north-south so getting east-west can become frustrating. And the fact the city has quite a few hills, bays, a canal, and lakes that simply cannot be bent onto the normal grid system can make some areas very confusing.

Older cities in China were often planned in either circular or square rings, to conform to city walls. Unfortunately (for historical reasons) the walls have come down in all but Xi'an



Note that a significant factor in US development is that we had a lot of land to spare. I mean a LOT of land. Granted, much of that was stolen from various American Indian tribes, but it's still a lot of land. As such many urban centers, particularly on the Eastern Seaboard, did catch up to Europe fairly quickly. New York City, while not quite as cramped as many European cities, is pretty compact. Also note that AFAIK no city in the US ever had a city wall.

Even American cities that have existed for 200+ years may have a dense core surrounded by sprawling suburbs that were developed after 1950. You can tell a lot about a neighborhood in a US city by its density.



Yes. Basically, as cars became popular, those who could afford it moved out into the suburbs and commuted, leaving inner city areas to deteriorate. This, of course, led to sprawl as housing developments sprang up until many American cities are actually quite difficult to get around in without a car.

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George Corley
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New York City did, hence "Wall Street".

York has a city wall. It's nice to walk round.

I think Edinburgh has the remains of one in various places, but it might as well be gone completely. Besides, the old town has the natural defence of being on a giant hard-to-scale rock. But the Flodden Wall, as one wall is called, can be found on old maps and bits of it are still in existence. Like round the back of my school for instance.

Apparently the walls were never very effective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_town_walls

I stand corrected. Did any others? I'm curious. You don't hear much about it, despite some cities might have benefited from some defenses against various American Indian tribes. Not to mention the sieges during the Civil War -- though I doubt anyone had time to raise a wall just for that.

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George Corley
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Many European cities (that doesn't exclude non-European ones) have a mix of grid and chaotic plans, which are determined by history. One of the best examples is Barcelona, which has a grid - chaotic - grid - chaotic urban plan. The first grid is Roman, when the city was Barcino, the first chaotic is medieval, the second grid is from Ildefons Cerdà's Eixample, and the second chaotic plan is from the second half of the 20th century onwards.

Barcino, Late Roman times (grid plan)
You can see the planned walls and the two main arteries: decumanus maximus (east-west) and cardo maximus (north-south). Outer ways will determine the future shape of streets in the Middle Ages.



Barcelona, 1050 to 1250 (beggining of the chaotic plan)
Suburbs appear outside the Roman walls, basically along ways and near monasteries and mills. The chaotic plan beggins.



Barcelona, 1250 to 1350
New walls enclose the new plan.



Barcelona, 1350 to 1500
Expansion to the south.



Barcelona, begginigs of the 20th century
A new urban plan is made to further expand Barcelona (lower center in the image). Ildefons Cerdà suggests an hippodamian plan to be built between Barcelona and the other towns in the Plain of Barcelona (Gràcia, Sant Andreu, Sants...). The Eixample is born.

Initial plan.


Growing of Eixample.


To the upper left, besides the port, the Old City; to the lower right, the former town of Gràcia, now a district of the city. Between both, the Eixample.

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Someone pointed out one disadvantage of a simple grid system: It spreads the traffic evenly, which means that you don't get safe low-traffic neighbourhoods where people can socialise and play in the streets. Apparently some cities solve this by having a large-scale grid system with a different system inside the squares.

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According to Wikipedia, New York City, New Orleans, St. Augustine, and Charleston (South Carolina) all had city walls. New York City's wall was built to keep out wild animals, not invading armies. New Orleans' wall was along "Rampart Street". I couldn't find out anything about the city walls of St. Augustine and Charleston.

St Augustine is an old Spanish settlement -- the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in North America, and has a fort, IIRC, so it very well could have needed a wall. There were some hostile tribes in Florida to defend against, after all.

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George Corley
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Actually, your question was right on the mark; I just goofed up. I mean to say that street numbers always increase going west and avenues north, but somehow I mixed them up as I was typing it all up. I'll change it shortly.

To clarify, here's a picture of the neighbourhood where I live.


which, come to think of it, is far from the best example since its a newer development when the planners started getting creative (for example, that evil J neighbourhood, Jackson Heights, is in the top-right corner). In an older neighbourhood:

Another thing to take into account is that most cities of any significant size are based around water—a coast, a river, or a lake. Usually that will include harbors or docks, which affect how streets and buildings in the area are laid out, and so on. The topology of the place needs to be taken into account as well. A city like Missoula or Salt Lake City, both of which are at the base of portions of the Rockies, has a hard limit on how it can expand, while Dallas or Oklahoma City have room for expansion in all directions.