Most areas of most cities have fairly intuitive street layouts, if you learn them. If I’m in Northeast Portland, and I am on a numbered street, then I am either heading east (number gets bigger) or west (number gets smaller). If it is a named street, then I am either heading north (number gets bigger), or south (number gets smaller).
Most named streets do have numbers, but you can also go off the building numbers.
I don’t know why it took me 25 years to really accept this, since I grew up being told about this, but most cities genuinely DO use a coordinate system, and learning it makes that sort of thing trivial :)
Most areas of most cities have fairly intuitive street layouts, if you learn them. If I’m in Northeast Portland, and I am on a numbered street, then I am either heading east (number gets bigger) or west (number gets smaller). If it is a named street, then I am either heading north (number gets bigger), or south (number gets smaller).
Most named streets do have numbers, but you can also go off the building numbers.
I don’t know why it took me 25 years to really accept this, since I grew up being told about this, but most cities genuinely DO use a coordinate system, and learning it makes that sort of thing trivial :)
… in the US.
In Europe, they’re intuitive only if you were born there or know a lot of history. (Of course South Parade is further north than North Parade!)
Fair, and thank you for calling me on it.
I get the impression that a majority of LessWrong readers are in major US cities, so I’m leaving it up as useful to them :)