Had the thought pop into my head randomly the other day. I’m assuming this is a town planning thing, but is there any sort of a guideline for making these decisions?
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The roads where I live (I live kind of rurally in Sweden) use a system called *Metertalsadress* (it probably has a fancier name in English, but a quick Google didn’t allow me to find it.) that is based on three facts,
– if there is more than one entry point on the road, you start counting at the entry point closest to the city/village/whatever that named the postal district OR if that gets ridiculous, starting from north and going south or starting from the west and going east.
– the house number, multiplied by ten, tells you how many metres to drive to find the house
– if the number is odd, the house is on the left side of the road. If the number is even, the house will be on the right side of the road.
I think I’ve read somewhere that it’s a common thing that even numbers are on the right side of the road, in most numbering systems. But not all of them. But the problem with cities is that a) there is always some exception to a good rule and b) in a very old city, it’s not at all unlikely that what was originally and historically the central city is something that has gradually changed over centuries.
Here in Brazil, all street numbers are how far from the start of the street the house is. Left side of the street is odd numbers, Right side of the street is even numbers. So number 1,633 is 1,633m from the start of the street on the left hand side. It is AWESOME!
If you’re at number 400 & looking for number 800, you know that it’s 400m further down and on the right side of the street.
The “start” of the street is determined by the city center.
I grew up in a neighborhood that was shaped like a P – one road that you can follow all the way around the loop to a stop sign, then turn left and drive out on the sane road you came in on.
The numbering was bizarre. When you enter the neighborhood, the house on the left was number 1, and next to it was 2, 3, etc. Follow the outer loop of houses all the way around, and you end at house number 54 right across from #1. Then the “island” in the loop of the P picked up at #55 and continued up to 67 or so.
It was wild, but only in retrospect. Growing up there, I never understood why houses would be numbered any differently.
Whichever end is closest to the main post office which is often used as the ‘location’ of a city. Ex. How far from Chicago to St Louis? It’s the distance from their main post offices.
Washington, DC actually has a very deliberate plan to street numbering. The Capitol building is the “center” and all numbers and letters go up from there. North Capitol street and South Capitol street run north and south from it. Numbered streets get higher as you go east and west. Lettered streets get higher as you go north and south. Each block is 100 numbers, regardless of the actual number of addresses on it. Makes it very easy to navigate, though you do need to specify which quadrant of the city you mean.
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