ELi5 – How are street adresses determined / how do they get numbered?
In: 59
This answer is from a former pizza delivery person using deductive reasoning. This is only meant as the logical explanation of “how” they do it from what I have observed.
The city or area is grid X and the center of the X is ground zero for both north vs south axis and east vs west axis. As you travel anyone of the 4 directions the numbers increase and the numbers increase according to the municipally, county or city you are in and that is likely by the “blocks”. So let’s say each walking city block equals “1000” numerical value. The address thus as you travel within that direction the first block from 0 will be 0-1000. My experience has been odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right.
That goes for all four directions and thus us people needing to find a location VIA ADDRESS basically know precisely where it is. Such as 1642 North 21st street
That address will thus equal 1.642 city blocks NORTH of the center line of the n vs s axis of our model on 21st street.
Hope that helps.
Usually it’s odd numbers on one side, even numbers on the other, and the 100s place increments with each new block. e.g. 101, 103, 105, (intersection), 201, … and similar with even numbers on the opposite side.
Some streets will start just from 1, and increment to the 100s after the first block. Sometimes a single building will have many addresses, e.g. 101-115 if it’s a shared complex of separate offices or residences.
I’ve on occasion seen an address like 22 1/2. My guess is they had to squeeze it in between existing buildings for whatever reason and it wasn’t possible or realistic to change the rest of the addresses on the block.
So there’s no single rule, but generally that’s how it works.
For naming the roads, this can come down to the area and location. Say a housing estate is located in an area called Dunville, then the roads might be called ‘Dunville Walk’, ‘Dunville Way’ etc.
There are numerous other reasons for naming and the architects/designers of these developments would propose their names and the council/housing body would approve them.
For the numbering it has already been said. And there are no rules set in place for this and every road will have a unique arrangement, so the numbering system might be different for each one.
This varies by cities. But let me give you my favorite example:
In Chicago, State/Madison is 0 North/South, 0 East/West. North/south streets west of state street are 100 west (1 block west) 200 west (2 blocks west) 300 west (3 blocks west); and the same for east/west streets that are north of Madison.
Even numbered addresses are on the north side of east/west streets, and on the west side of North/south streets.
It’s 8 blocks to a mile, unless you’re in the central downtown area when it is 10.
So if you have an address that is 1060 W Addison Street—Wrigley field—you’d be able to know right away it’s 10 blocks (1.25 miles) west of state street, 36 blocks (4.5 miles) north of downtown (if you were able to memorize that Addison is 3600 north like any true Chicagoan would), and on the north side of the street because of the even number.
This is why there isn’t a ton of “East” addresses in Chicago unless you’re on the south side or in the central business district. If you were at 2400 E Jackson, you’d be swimming in Lake Michigan.
There isn’t any “rule” that applies everywhere. Standard practice in North America is that odd numbers go on the right and even on the left (direction you are counting is forward; many other places do the opposite and put odd on the left/even on the right). Many cities jump numbers by 100 with every block, especially the ones that number the streets like First Avenue, Second Avenue, and so on. A building on the 600 block would have a 6XX street number and would be found on the bock after the sixth (major) cross street intersection (alleys and lanes are not included, usually, even if they exist).
Most numbering is sequential by properties (lots). They can do this without much problem when local laws impose a minimum street frontage for a lot, so the numbering is mostly just how many lots COULD fit that length of road, not how many ACTUALLY fit the road today, for the buildings now there. Might need to skip a number every so often when lots have larger than minimum frontage. As a general thing, most places are subdivided on a plan before any development starts, so they know how many lots will be on the street and what street number should be used even when the lower-number lots are vacant.
Some places do not start numbering at 1, and might start using 1000, or 4000, or whatever (even, say 2200 for no clear reason) as the “zero” value. Seems pretty common to do this here in Quebec where I live. I do not know why.
And finally, some places number based on distance from the “start” of the road (some place called “zero”), so you can sort of figure out how far down the road the place would be based on its number. This isn’t all that different from frontage/lot counting, but is mostly used for very long roads because huge stretches of the road might not be subdivided yet, so hard to count. So they number based on some distance-based method.
My friends family owns a real-estate development company; They are the ones that buy the land, put in the streets the water, power etc and then sell the developed lots to a home builder.
He said they are allowed to name them what ever they want as long as there is no existing duplication on the books, which is pretty easy since there are so many designations ie street, parkway, lane etc.
Most of the streets in the subdivisions they have done have at least 1 street named after each child in the family.
Everything gets planned out ahead of time. That’s what zoning laws are for. The city keeps track of all of the lots that have been numbered out ahead of time. They also sometimes leave gaps in case a neighborhood becomes more dense than planned. My parents’ neighborhood, for example, only has every 4th number because it’s not very dense, but in case anyone decides to sell off half their lot and build another house there, there’s another number.
If they didn’t plan ahead for the increased density, letters can be added to the house numbers.
Entirely depends on the local regulation in tradition. In some places the numbers are split with odd numbers on one side and even on another, in some they are not. Some places start counting from one specific direction, or intersection with a key street, some count from a point, real or imaginary, some determine direction with logic that applies only to a certain area. Some places number residential and commercial spaces differently even if they are on the same street/building (Florence comes to mind). Names – the same – some towns/cities have regulatory bodies that are tasked with names, some accept whatever developers name their subdivisions, some seek local input etc.
Not too far from me is a street that was originally laid out with very large property lots. Over the years some if them have been subdivided. Instead of renumbering the houses the town decided to just add 1/2 to the end of the number of the new houses. Between lets say 12 Main Street and 14 Main St (with 13 being on the other side of the street), the new house is and 1/2 Main Street.
Where I live (rural area), our addresses are distance from where our major N/S highway intersects our major E/W highway.
So if your address is 5864 E 850 N, the road you live on is 850N which is 8.5 miles north on the n/s highway from the intersection, and then you’d turn east on 850N off the highway and drive 5.864 miles which will put you right in front of their mailbox, but possibly past their driveway.
There are few non-numerical road names outside of city limits, but those that have actual names travel from one road to another, but do not continue through the intersection on either end. Or at least I’ve never seen one that does.
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