Interesting BBC article on street names/addresses
Posted by AndrewBuck on 30 September 2011 in English.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
شننه
په 30 September 2011 په 15:56 باندې د 0123456789 تبصره
This is an interesting, related video about Japanese addresses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1zh49J5rsg
په 30 September 2011 په 20:06 باندې د Zverik تبصره
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
په 3 October 2011 په 18:08 باندې د rye212 تبصره
Similiar issues in Costa Rica, where they address relative to the nearest intersection. 3rd House from right corner of the main square.