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I came across this article on the BBC news this morning and thought the OSM community would be interested in it. It discusses the way the Kabul post office delivers letters to people, given that most of the streets are unnamed and the houses are not numbered.

The "addresses" instead tend to be the recipient's name, along with some rough directions for how to find them, like "near the such and such mosque", or "by the local high school". Given that this is how deliveries are done in this area (and probably many other areas like it), I thought it would be good to show this to everyone so they can have some insight into what kinds of things might be useful to map for people in these areas. It seems like POI's and landuse may actually be more useful than street names for finding your way around, since many streets are unnamed or only informally named.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14806350

-Buck

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Discussion

Kommentaar van 0123456789 op 30 September 2011 om 15:56

This is an interesting, related video about Japanese addresses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1zh49J5rsg

Kommentaar van Zverik op 30 September 2011 om 20:06

And don't forget "Where the Streets Have No Name" talk by Daniel Kastl on SotM 2011: http://www.fosslc.org/drupal/content/where-streets-have-no-name

Kommentaar van rye212 op 3 Oktober 2011 om 18:08

Similiar issues in Costa Rica, where they address relative to the nearest intersection. 3rd House from right corner of the main square.

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