What Were They Thinking?

a bit like boston, "whither goeth the cow, there goeth the road..."

I don't know, that doesn't look half as bad as Asheville, NC. Driving in Asheville is mass insanity.

(Though if you take a good look at Asheville then hit the "terrain" button... suddenly the 'why' becomes clear - freaking mountains.)

And this from someone who once lived in Seattle with its 9(?) different addressing schemes.

This looks tame compared to several cities I have visited. Seattle, for instance, as Allen #3 said. Miami, where SW 3rd Ave. simultaneously intersects SW 12th Ave., SW 22nd St., and SW 32nd Rd., as well as having a straightforward intersection with 16 different names (each of the two crossing roads has a name, a county grid number, a City of Hialeah grid number, and a state highway number). London, where on some streets house numbers run consecutively from one end of the street to the other along one side, then back to the beginning along the other side. Uppsala, which has even numbers on one side of the street and odd numbers on the other but makes no attempt to line them up (e.g., 35 might be directly across from 4 and a couple of blocks from 3, the building you would expect to be opposite 4). Compared to these, Hickory looks rather tame--maybe it's the state roads that make it look confusing.

Pittsburgh may have wacky streets (if you lived on Lilac Street, you could walk to Beechwood Blvd in three different cardinal directions as it bounded you on three sides), but at least we have distinctly named streets.

That's bizarre. Although, once you recognize he scheme, it's all very logical and would probably allow you to find things more easily without a map than in a city where streets are named after people, trees, and such.

Since people are chiming in with idiosyncrasies - Albany, NY's is that it has quite a few streets that end, then pick back up a few thousand feet later on the other side of some obstacle (park, government complex, college,...). You can be on the right street and go from what looks like one end to the other without finding the address you're looking for.

@#6, Phoenix is like that, too. They'll even pick back up on the other side of a mountain range.

hrm, having lived in seattle longer than anywhere i've lived in my entire life, i've never really had a problem finding my way around that city. well, except when a hill or body of water pops up in the middle of a road .. but then again, i've had that same problem with manhattan, too .. but a flat city with no major features like water or mountains (or big hills) like hickory? it just seems like some sort of city planning insanity was the motivation.

Providence, RI is a hodgepodge too. Thankfully I-95 bisects the city rather nicely.

That said, most streets are named but as you go northeast you get 1st, 2nd, 3rd... streets. Then the roads parallel to the highways are Service Road N where N is a number between 1 and 12.

you want crazy, check out the UK... in hastings, as a quick example, you have the A259 which follows the waterfront, not 50 metres on average from the water. it will have FIVE DIFFERENT NAMES from London Road and Warrior Square Garden (St Leonards on Sea) to Debenham's, a distance of roughly 3/4 mile, all inhabited by residences, businesses, and the one small garden (aforementioned garden adorned by statue of Q Victoria)... Grand Parade, Eversfield Place, Verulam Place, White Rock, and Carlisle Parade.

If you want to follow the highway around the corner into Hastings Downtown proper, it has another five names before you get to the old Safeway, and that's about 1/2 mile...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=st+leonards…

And if we're simply talking "grid" here, London, bare none, is about as nasty as you can get... I have SO Much Respect for the Black Taxi drivers who have "the knowledge"

If you want a street-naming system that was clearly designed by a sadist, try Levittown PA.
The defvelopment is divided into 41 sections, each of which has a cutesy name. Within a section, all of the street names start with the same letter, e.g., in "Crabapple Hollow" all the street names will start with "C".

If you can't quite remember exactly what the street Aunt Martha lives on is called, but you definitely remember that "it starts with a C", you're prtty much SOL for finding her house. Add in the fact that there are only 6 different house designs in the entire burg and a general lack of visual landmarks and you've pretty much stymied the methods most normal humans use to find places.

If you find yourself in Levittown, your best bet is to keep driving in the same general compass direction in the hope that you will eventually stumble onto a highway that leads back to civilization.

Were they stoned, or just lazy?

Perhaps Hickory was lucky enough to grow before a city planner was able to enforce some sterile, regimented grid on the city.

Sure, that grid appears to make getting around, finding places, easier. But it also kills any emergent quirkiness that will give the area character.

Give me that Boston cowpaths or the British craziness anytime.

And, these days, with our handy portable maps (right most of the time) it is getting pretty easy to navigate in these seemingly unplanned environments.

And this from someone who once lived in Seattle with its 9(?) different addressing schemes.

Seattle isn't as bad as all that. There is no place in Seattle where more than three of its addressing schemes overlap.

Some, just some, of that is explained if you look at a topographical map of the area. It is a very hilly area that limits how you can run roads if you want to do it economically:
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lon=-81.3428642&lat=35.7392989&datum=na…

Toss in how cow paths become roads, add in that RRs typically came into such towns without regard to existing avenues and so imposed their own cardinal points, and then lay over a few modern highways nearby and you get that sort of tangle.

If you want a major tangle you might look at a map of Jacksonville Florida. Multiple major highways coming from different directions; minor highways, often historical routes; converging RR tracks serving a large shipping hub, passenger, and military needs; a convergence of several rivers, waterways and canals; all combine to make a huge metropolitan area where even the locals get lost.

In such situations wear and tear on mail carriers and delivery people is limited by assigning them routes and limited areas of responsibility. Once they absorb the quirks and nuances of their small area they are all set.

I thank the stars that I grew up in Chicago. Almost all streets run north-south or east-west. There are a few angled streets--probably Native American paths to the mouth of the Chicago River.

London. Streets are all named, never numbered, and never with compass relationships to town centers. And very few are straight for any significant distance.

I was shocked, I tell you, when I first visited USA and discovered townships laid out in grids. Seattle is a bit more like home in that respect.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about exactly this subject on my commute in to work this morning.

It's normal for a city that predates motorized travel. Looks like it could still be a somewhat pedestrian friendly city (thanks to the layout), regardless the motorized arterials slashing through the middle of the place.

You should try Tokyo. 80% of the streets don't have names or houses have numbers

ah, i have lived in tokyo, and i'd forgotten about that.

I'll bet this city requires a PhD for its pizza delivery people and postal workers...

Doesn't that stand for Pizza Hut Driver?

... and no formal education at all from its city planners ...

C'mon now - they have a choice of Lenoir Rhyne College & Lenoir Rhyne University!

I actually grew up in Hickory (and was just telling someone the other day about the street naming conventions there)... I never thought it was confusing when I lived there because I never really realized what the alternatives were. The worst part about the naming scheme is that in addition to streets and avenues, there are courts, places, roads, and drives with the same numbering scheme.

It's not particularly pedestrian friendly as the downtown area is tiny with few restaurants and even less nightlife... most of the city has become the usual suburbia dotted with shopping areas, etc.

In Charlotte, there used to be an intersection of Queens Rd with Queens Rd (near Queens College)... I think they've changed it since then though.

Didn't you explore your new home city ? If you examine the city plan of Frankfurt, you will find that there is no planning at all :-D
European cities haven't been planned, they grew organically around the old cities. If you look out, you will find that there are strange streets looking like a circle or star around the old city. These were fortresses because Germany was a constant war zone during the Middle Ages. These structures are lacking in England, because England was never invaded by a hostile country due to their sea superiority.

The disadvantage is that every street has its own name and streets may change their name at crossings. So if you want to get to a specific address, you must use a map with a coordinate system and indicators for one-way streets and an index with street names (they are called "Stadtatlas" here (city atlas)). It is normal for firms that if you click at "Contact", you are getting instructions for the best driving route. Or your new friend explain how you need to walk or drive to visit him/her.

On the other side many European cities are (a)esthetically more pleasing because the inhabitants automatically choosed a good solution for laying out the pathways and parcels acknowleding the features of their surroundings (Paul Graham agrees: http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html). Another advantage is that there are no suburbs: You can reach every point by walking or even bicycling (the latter is not recommended in big cities with a few exceptions) and there are countless ways to get from one point to another. Shopping centers etc. are very near to your location so you don't need to drive downtown for shopping.
In cities with a good underground/bus system you don't even need a car (!!).

Try Canberra.

St. Petersburg, FL is much the same. Pick a number from 1 to 90, then add your choice of Street, Road, Avenue, Lane, Court, Way. Duplicate by using the same scheme, differentiated by North or South. Reduplicate by quartering for East and West.

Trying to meet friends at a location, I watched my GPS start shuddering, then turn into an MP3 player, then just a squarish little brick.

Now, London can be troublesome, what with the exuberant changes in street names, but they do have names that are distinguishable. Things get very crazy, however, at squares, where each building has its own number based on being present in the square, not any of the streets that may enter or exit the square.

But at least even that is not as sadistic as Tokyo building numbering, based on when the structure was built, not its relationship to neighboring buildings.