6 ms·

Six ways to never get lost in a city without GPS or Sat Nav

100 points by marklittlewood 15y ago

mseebach 15y ago
It's cute, but really doesn't do much to address the issue of being lost in a city. When I'm lost in a city, my problem isn't whether I'm heading north or east, or where the nearest station is - it's whether I took the wrong turn three blocks ago, and where that side street I'm looking for is.
- iloveponies 15y ago
  These are not basic navigation skills, which you should have already to make good use of them, they are to help you if you know the route to take but don't have a point of interest or lost your bearings.
- nucleardog 15y ago
  Once you're lost, my old navigation method can work wonders, and it's really simple: Turn onto progressively busier streets (determined by traffic control, not by current traffic). You made it to your destination in some small residential area, but how are you ever going to find your way out of here? Just drive straight along until you come up to an intersection. You've got a stop/yield sign, and they have nothing? Turn. You're on a plain two-lane street, and the crossing street is divided with a boulevard? Turn. You both have lights, but they have the crossing button or turn signals? Turn. In very short order you'll find yourself on a major street, which is a street you'll be more likely to recognize and be famliar with. You're no longer lost and can try locating your destination again.
paganel 15y ago
Use paper maps?
marklittlewood 15y ago
The other thing that it might be possible to do though obviously not if you are a complete introvert is ask someone.
- warp 15y ago
  This does assume that you to some extent speak a language the local population also understands.
  - 4ad 15y ago
    And that the local population is helpful. In the country where I live people will offer help without being asked if you read a map in the middle of the street, but good luck asking someone for directions if you're not a native.
    - dalore 15y ago
      In Japan if you ask someone for directions and they don't know it, rather than say that they want to look helpful and will make something up.
pavanred 15y ago
I'd rather just look at the sky and see the direction of sunrise or sunset to find the direction instead of looking for TV satellites or churches etc. And, I can't help but notice that the author starts by saying these are the ways to find directions when GPS is knocked out or if there is no one around to ask for directions and later speaks about following the flow of people!
- mapleoin 15y ago
  I think these are all meant for different situations. For example you can't look for the Sun if its cloudy. Also, the horizon is usually blocked by a lot of buildings in big cities, so even if it is clear, you won't be able to find the sun pretty easily. Also, if you don't have a watch and the time is somewhere between 11 and 1 o'clock how can you tell if the Sun is in the Southeast or Southwest?
  - pavanred 15y ago
    However we rationalize, finding your way out when you are lost in a city based on wind erosion patterns or the direction in which the wind is blowing the clouds, is perhaps how Sherlock Holmes would find his way. I'd rather look for someone to ask directions, look for road signs, landmarks, payphones, maps, city's skyline, metro stations etc.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >For example you can't look for the Sun if its cloudy. // I do - one can often tell where the brightest part of the sky is even on an overcast day; knowing roughly the time and season (for a known geography) then gives a rough direction. I read a report that polarising sunglasses help this too but I've never actually tried. With me it's sometimes more of a perception that the sun is in such a direction whilst I can't really make out that part as [particularly] brighter.
jasonkester 15y ago
Interesting that of these six methods, only one or two would actually work in the United States, and then only in a few cities. - England doesn't really do Cable TV like America does, so you actually do see these dishes everywhere. In America, you don't ever see them. You'd probably violate your lease for installing one. - American cities have hardly any churches compared to Europe, where 5 out of every 7 buildings you pass will be a Church of some form. - America is 20 years old. Anything older than that is due for replacement. Hence no weathering. + (1/2) People. Cool. American cities do in fact have crowds, so you can follow them. But unless you're in NYC, you're probably going to end up at a parking garage. - American cities tend to follow a grid, and are much more decentralized. Everything you need to get to is in every direction. Every road is six lanes wide, even the dead ends and alleys. + (1/2) New York might have clouds, but I've never seen one in LA. So yeah, if you're lost in a US city, you might as well just ask somebody.
- arethuza 15y ago
  "actually do see these dishes everywhere" Not in towns that have lots of old buildings, where planning rules generally try and stop people from attaching satellite dishes. However, people still have them - but positioned on the roof so that they aren't that obvious from ground level.
- notauser 15y ago
  You'd probably violate your lease for installing [a satellite dish in the US]. Large parts of London (and other areas of the UK) are designated as conservation zones and so satellite dishes require planning permission. Every now and again someone gets around to complaining and all the dishes under 4 years old are removed from a road.
- julian_t 15y ago
  "Every road is six lanes wide, even the dead ends and alleys" And you can see your destination, but it is on the other side of that six lane highway, you're on foot, and there's no sign of a crossing point anywhere...
- Graham24 15y ago
arethuza 15y ago
We were in Marrakech earlier this year - I really tried very hard not to get lost, but it's almost impossible not to. Even the GPS on an iPhone and Google Maps didn't help that much (and produced a horrific bill for roaming charges). Far easier to pay one of the locals to walk you to where you want to go - at least round the souks where it is completely maze like. Another approach to in-city navigation is, of course, to have a centrally located conspicuous landmark. In this town an ancient castle on top of an extinct volcano serves splendidly in this role.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  Got to be Edinburgh?!
  - arethuza 15y ago
    Yes :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle
- mynegation 15y ago
  Yes, asking locals is the only way to go. There are things that map will never help you with i Marrakesh. After two days in Marrakesh locals told me that there is a shorter way from my riyad (kind of a guesthouse) to Jamaa-el-Fna (main square). Easy! You just have to turn left here instead of right, after twenty steps use the arch to find seemingly dead-end internal yard, enter some non-descript door and ... wait for it... smile at the receptionist of the spa salon on your way to their front door, which opens to one of the main streets. And from there it is a direct way to Jamaa. It is like a magical world from child fairy tales, with wormholes in time and space behind every corner.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    We stayed at a riad quite close to the souks, along a very windy lane down the side of a mosque. Even 20 minute walk from the taxi that took us from the airport to the riad was an adventure! Strongly recommended: http://www.riadzolah.com/ http://www.riadzolah.com/
pavanred 15y ago
I have personally tried walking off randomly in Paris. I didn't use any map or GPS or even my direction sense. I just kept walking randomly and I realized it is very difficult to get lost in a city like Paris even if you wanted to. You pick any direction and walk for about 15- 20 minutes and you would definitely find at least a sign post pointing in the direction of a nearest metro station, and once you are in a metro, you are in the grid, you are not lost anymore! And of course, in a city like Paris there are always people around irrespective of the time of the day to ask for directions.
Graham24 15y ago
I got lost in Venice once when i'd just arrived. It was midnight on a sunday and there weren't many people around as I was trying not to think about the film "Don't look now". It was about then that i realised that although i had what looked like the hotel's address, it wasn't going to be quite that simple to find.
- radu_floricica 15y ago
  Oh, Venice doesn't count. Getting lost there is an experience in itself... although probably it would have been better not to have it so soon, and presumably tired and hungry.
buyx 15y ago
Another way of finding your way around is city route numbers. In South Africa most major routes in metropolitan areas have "M" numbers (metro route numbers). I once managed to navigate across Johannesburg using these alone. Unfortunately, in Johannesburg at least, they are not widely noticed by the public, except on freeways, and increasingly not replaced when they are vandalised or stolen, but they are very useful if you know about them, both for finding alternate routes, and for orienting yourself when lost. They are usually consistently numbered. In Greater Johannesburg, even numbers go east-west, while odd numbers go north-south, and the signs also include a compass direction. In Durban, where there has been a huge number of street renamings, they have become indespensible for me when I visit the city. EDIT: As an aside, if you ever drive in South Africa, do not rely on Google Maps (which has numerous errors). Rather buy an up-to-date map book or GPS. The map books by Map Studio are quite good.
Luc 15y ago
In Europe (1) streets are numbered starting from the end of the street closest to the center of the city. This is very handy for when you're making your way back to the center! 1: though I'm not sure how widely this applies, it's worked for me in several countries.
hackermom 15y ago
I think the author is trying to say, "use your sense of locality; you know, that thing we're all born with". Ironically, we don't really need to put an effort into using the tricks the author conjured up - it's all automated in other ways as part of the process of orientation. But, yes, I am aware of the fact that a small percentage of the population has practically no mentionable sense of locality at all, and may need to navigate manually rather than relying on inherent abilities.
josscrowcroft 15y ago
This is great advice, but I just read the title as "Six ways to never have fun in a city"
tokenadult 15y ago
Looking at the sun did me in the first time I crossed the Tropic of Cancer near the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice. I am very used to using sun angle at different times of the day to find cardinal directions. That works very well where I usually live (45 degrees north latitude). But on a visit to Hong Kong, I kept going exactly in the reverse direction I "knew" I should go, and I finally figured out that near the end of June, at the latitude of Hong Kong, the sun was to my NORTH for the first time in my life, and looking at shadows or the sun angle kept reversing my sense of which way was north and which way was south. As a separate issue during my first visit to Hong Kong, I found my American (and Taiwan) habit of assuming that road traffic drives on the right side of the road made me tend to look the wrong way most recently as I was about to cross streets. I almost got run over by a truck because of that. Habitual behavior is harder to correct than truly novel behavior. P.S. The submitted article's advice on using wind direction (shown by movement of clouds) as a constant direction over short time spans works very badly here in the American Midwest. There are enough flagpoles in my neighborhood that I can readily observe wind direction as I walk or bike to do errands, and I've frequently seen radical changes in wind direction revealed either by flags near ground level or by clouds high in the sky in just a few hours.
- bodhi 15y ago
  > I kept going exactly in the reverse direction I "knew" I should go I had exactly the same problem when moving from Australia to Japan, and it didn't go away after 4 years living there! I always wondered whether it was to do with the sun angle, or some other effect, as I seemed to suffer from it at night too. I wonder if there's been any studies of this kind of effect.
- CountHackulus 15y ago
  Don't look at flagpoles, the wind close to the ground is going to vary a lot more than the wind higher up where the clouds are.
EGreg 15y ago
Yea, try doing this in Venice, then talk to me :)
sliverstorm 15y ago
I used to think I could get around by following street numbers. Because, you know, street 3 is next to street 4 is next to street 5. Then I discovered in San Jose, 4th street is nowhere near 3rd and 5th street. Then I discovered in Denver, there are two 21st streets in different parts of town. Now I have a GPS.
- showerst 15y ago
  Make sure to bring it if you ever visit Washington DC, there are four of every numbered street =). (Quadrants centered on the capitol.) On the plus side they're all marked NW/NE/SW/SE, but it's an occasional tourist mistake that can land a person way off course.
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    There are also really odd things like streets that seemingly dead-end, but which actually continue in the same direction but offset by one or more blocks; in other words, a street that takes a dog-leg via a crossing street. The problem is that there are almost never signs to tell you which way to turn to stay with the street you're on, or even that the street does, in fact, continue. Even with a GPS, DC can be hard to navigate because there are so many discrepancies between most map databases and the actual streets. For example, I have a relatively recent Garmin, and every time I'm in DC it tries at least once to turn me the wrong way down a one-way street, or tries to send me down a street that isn't there. The one-way streets aren't alternated logically like the ones in NW Portland, either; there may be some rhyme or reason to the one-ways, but I have yet to decipher it. Another experience I often have in DC: a street I'm on suddenly becomes one-way in the opposite direction.
    - showerst 15y ago
      Ohh yeah. Driving in DC is a nightmare in general. Thank goodness we have great mass transit in a fair portion of the city. The craziest thing is that we have lanes and even whole streets that change DIRECTION depending on the time of day/day of the week.
scraplab 15y ago
I gave a presentation about this a few years ago. It's pretty UK centric. http://tomtaylor.co.uk/talks/eight-ways-to-orientate-yourself-anywhere http://tomtaylor.co.uk/talks/eight-ways-to-orientate-yoursel...
grecy 15y ago
I just spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina, with no GPS and very basic paper maps. I don't think these tips are useful at all to someone constantly on the move in new places. I'm typically excellent with directions and only got "completely lost" a dozen times or so. (For some reason, Bolivia had me convinced North was South...) Those six methods assume a lot that doesn't work everywhere. 1. Tons of places have no satellite dishes. 2. Good idea, but you need to find a town to find a church... 3. Surely you need to be a local to know about weather patterns. 4. Assuming people have jobs, are going to work, and there is some kind of mass transit that stops at some kind of known location regularly. 5. You have to already know if you're North or South of the city.. 6. What? again, you would have to know which way is North/South before you look at the clouds.
- BerislavLopac 15y ago
  Well, the title does say "in the city". There are other ways to orient outside of one...
RobLach 15y ago
I'm from Chicago where the streets are gridded n/s/e/w and the addresses are numbered according to distance. "Block numbers are consistent across the whole city. Standard blocks, of 100 addresses each, are roughly 1/8th of a mile long. (Hence, a mile is equivalent to a street number difference of 800.) Each street is assigned a number based on its distance from the zero point of the address system, the intersection of State Street and Madison Street. A street with a W (west) or E (east) number runs north-south, while a street with a N (north) or S (south) number runs east-west. A street's number is usually written on street signs at intersections, below the street name. Major thoroughfares are at each mile (multiples of 800) and secondary arteries at the half-mile marks. Thus, Western Ave at 2400 W is a north-south major thoroughfare, while Montrose Ave at 4400 N is an east-west secondary artery. In general, "avenues" run north-south and "streets" run east-west." - http://wikitravel.org/en/Chicago http://wikitravel.org/en/Chicago General - http://www.chicagohomeestates.com/info/chicago_street_guide http://www.chicagohomeestates.com/info/chicago_street_guide

100 points by marklittlewood 15y ago

It's cute, but really doesn't do much to address the issue of being lost in a city. When I'm lost in a city, my problem isn't whether I'm heading north or east, or where the nearest station is - it's whether I took the wrong turn three blocks ago, and where that side street I'm looking for is.

iloveponies 15y ago
These are not basic navigation skills, which you should have already to make good use of them, they are to help you if you know the route to take but don't have a point of interest or lost your bearings.
nucleardog 15y ago
Once you're lost, my old navigation method can work wonders, and it's really simple: Turn onto progressively busier streets (determined by traffic control, not by current traffic). You made it to your destination in some small residential area, but how are you ever going to find your way out of here? Just drive straight along until you come up to an intersection. You've got a stop/yield sign, and they have nothing? Turn. You're on a plain two-lane street, and the crossing street is divided with a boulevard? Turn. You both have lights, but they have the crossing button or turn signals? Turn. In very short order you'll find yourself on a major street, which is a street you'll be more likely to recognize and be famliar with. You're no longer lost and can try locating your destination again.

paganel 15y ago

Use paper maps?

marklittlewood 15y ago

The other thing that it might be possible to do though obviously not if you are a complete introvert is ask someone.

warp 15y ago
This does assume that you to some extent speak a language the local population also understands.
- 4ad 15y ago
  And that the local population is helpful. In the country where I live people will offer help without being asked if you read a map in the middle of the street, but good luck asking someone for directions if you're not a native.
  - dalore 15y ago
    In Japan if you ask someone for directions and they don't know it, rather than say that they want to look helpful and will make something up.

pavanred 15y ago

I'd rather just look at the sky and see the direction of sunrise or sunset to find the direction instead of looking for TV satellites or churches etc. And, I can't help but notice that the author starts by saying these are the ways to find directions when GPS is knocked out or if there is no one around to ask for directions and later speaks about following the flow of people!

mapleoin 15y ago
I think these are all meant for different situations. For example you can't look for the Sun if its cloudy. Also, the horizon is usually blocked by a lot of buildings in big cities, so even if it is clear, you won't be able to find the sun pretty easily. Also, if you don't have a watch and the time is somewhere between 11 and 1 o'clock how can you tell if the Sun is in the Southeast or Southwest?
- pavanred 15y ago
  However we rationalize, finding your way out when you are lost in a city based on wind erosion patterns or the direction in which the wind is blowing the clouds, is perhaps how Sherlock Holmes would find his way. I'd rather look for someone to ask directions, look for road signs, landmarks, payphones, maps, city's skyline, metro stations etc.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >For example you can't look for the Sun if its cloudy. // I do - one can often tell where the brightest part of the sky is even on an overcast day; knowing roughly the time and season (for a known geography) then gives a rough direction. I read a report that polarising sunglasses help this too but I've never actually tried. With me it's sometimes more of a perception that the sun is in such a direction whilst I can't really make out that part as [particularly] brighter.

jasonkester 15y ago

Interesting that of these six methods, only one or two would actually work in the United States, and then only in a few cities. - England doesn't really do Cable TV like America does, so you actually do see these dishes everywhere. In America, you don't ever see them. You'd probably violate your lease for installing one. - American cities have hardly any churches compared to Europe, where 5 out of every 7 buildings you pass will be a Church of some form. - America is 20 years old. Anything older than that is due for replacement. Hence no weathering. + (1/2) People. Cool. American cities do in fact have crowds, so you can follow them. But unless you're in NYC, you're probably going to end up at a parking garage. - American cities tend to follow a grid, and are much more decentralized. Everything you need to get to is in every direction. Every road is six lanes wide, even the dead ends and alleys. + (1/2) New York might have clouds, but I've never seen one in LA. So yeah, if you're lost in a US city, you might as well just ask somebody.

arethuza 15y ago
"actually do see these dishes everywhere" Not in towns that have lots of old buildings, where planning rules generally try and stop people from attaching satellite dishes. However, people still have them - but positioned on the roof so that they aren't that obvious from ground level.
notauser 15y ago
You'd probably violate your lease for installing [a satellite dish in the US]. Large parts of London (and other areas of the UK) are designated as conservation zones and so satellite dishes require planning permission. Every now and again someone gets around to complaining and all the dishes under 4 years old are removed from a road.
julian_t 15y ago
"Every road is six lanes wide, even the dead ends and alleys" And you can see your destination, but it is on the other side of that six lane highway, you're on foot, and there's no sign of a crossing point anywhere...
Graham24 15y ago

arethuza 15y ago

We were in Marrakech earlier this year - I really tried very hard not to get lost, but it's almost impossible not to. Even the GPS on an iPhone and Google Maps didn't help that much (and produced a horrific bill for roaming charges). Far easier to pay one of the locals to walk you to where you want to go - at least round the souks where it is completely maze like. Another approach to in-city navigation is, of course, to have a centrally located conspicuous landmark. In this town an ancient castle on top of an extinct volcano serves splendidly in this role.

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
Got to be Edinburgh?!
- arethuza 15y ago
  Yes :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle
mynegation 15y ago
Yes, asking locals is the only way to go. There are things that map will never help you with i Marrakesh. After two days in Marrakesh locals told me that there is a shorter way from my riyad (kind of a guesthouse) to Jamaa-el-Fna (main square). Easy! You just have to turn left here instead of right, after twenty steps use the arch to find seemingly dead-end internal yard, enter some non-descript door and ... wait for it... smile at the receptionist of the spa salon on your way to their front door, which opens to one of the main streets. And from there it is a direct way to Jamaa. It is like a magical world from child fairy tales, with wormholes in time and space behind every corner.
- arethuza 15y ago
  We stayed at a riad quite close to the souks, along a very windy lane down the side of a mosque. Even 20 minute walk from the taxi that took us from the airport to the riad was an adventure! Strongly recommended: http://www.riadzolah.com/ http://www.riadzolah.com/

pavanred 15y ago

I have personally tried walking off randomly in Paris. I didn't use any map or GPS or even my direction sense. I just kept walking randomly and I realized it is very difficult to get lost in a city like Paris even if you wanted to. You pick any direction and walk for about 15- 20 minutes and you would definitely find at least a sign post pointing in the direction of a nearest metro station, and once you are in a metro, you are in the grid, you are not lost anymore! And of course, in a city like Paris there are always people around irrespective of the time of the day to ask for directions.

Graham24 15y ago

I got lost in Venice once when i'd just arrived. It was midnight on a sunday and there weren't many people around as I was trying not to think about the film "Don't look now". It was about then that i realised that although i had what looked like the hotel's address, it wasn't going to be quite that simple to find.

radu_floricica 15y ago
Oh, Venice doesn't count. Getting lost there is an experience in itself... although probably it would have been better not to have it so soon, and presumably tired and hungry.

buyx 15y ago

Another way of finding your way around is city route numbers. In South Africa most major routes in metropolitan areas have "M" numbers (metro route numbers). I once managed to navigate across Johannesburg using these alone. Unfortunately, in Johannesburg at least, they are not widely noticed by the public, except on freeways, and increasingly not replaced when they are vandalised or stolen, but they are very useful if you know about them, both for finding alternate routes, and for orienting yourself when lost. They are usually consistently numbered. In Greater Johannesburg, even numbers go east-west, while odd numbers go north-south, and the signs also include a compass direction. In Durban, where there has been a huge number of street renamings, they have become indespensible for me when I visit the city. EDIT: As an aside, if you ever drive in South Africa, do not rely on Google Maps (which has numerous errors). Rather buy an up-to-date map book or GPS. The map books by Map Studio are quite good.

Luc 15y ago

In Europe (1) streets are numbered starting from the end of the street closest to the center of the city. This is very handy for when you're making your way back to the center! 1: though I'm not sure how widely this applies, it's worked for me in several countries.

hackermom 15y ago

I think the author is trying to say, "use your sense of locality; you know, that thing we're all born with". Ironically, we don't really need to put an effort into using the tricks the author conjured up - it's all automated in other ways as part of the process of orientation. But, yes, I am aware of the fact that a small percentage of the population has practically no mentionable sense of locality at all, and may need to navigate manually rather than relying on inherent abilities.

josscrowcroft 15y ago

This is great advice, but I just read the title as "Six ways to never have fun in a city"

tokenadult 15y ago

Looking at the sun did me in the first time I crossed the Tropic of Cancer near the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice. I am very used to using sun angle at different times of the day to find cardinal directions. That works very well where I usually live (45 degrees north latitude). But on a visit to Hong Kong, I kept going exactly in the reverse direction I "knew" I should go, and I finally figured out that near the end of June, at the latitude of Hong Kong, the sun was to my NORTH for the first time in my life, and looking at shadows or the sun angle kept reversing my sense of which way was north and which way was south. As a separate issue during my first visit to Hong Kong, I found my American (and Taiwan) habit of assuming that road traffic drives on the right side of the road made me tend to look the wrong way most recently as I was about to cross streets. I almost got run over by a truck because of that. Habitual behavior is harder to correct than truly novel behavior. P.S. The submitted article's advice on using wind direction (shown by movement of clouds) as a constant direction over short time spans works very badly here in the American Midwest. There are enough flagpoles in my neighborhood that I can readily observe wind direction as I walk or bike to do errands, and I've frequently seen radical changes in wind direction revealed either by flags near ground level or by clouds high in the sky in just a few hours.

bodhi 15y ago
> I kept going exactly in the reverse direction I "knew" I should go I had exactly the same problem when moving from Australia to Japan, and it didn't go away after 4 years living there! I always wondered whether it was to do with the sun angle, or some other effect, as I seemed to suffer from it at night too. I wonder if there's been any studies of this kind of effect.
CountHackulus 15y ago
Don't look at flagpoles, the wind close to the ground is going to vary a lot more than the wind higher up where the clouds are.

EGreg 15y ago

Yea, try doing this in Venice, then talk to me :)

sliverstorm 15y ago

I used to think I could get around by following street numbers. Because, you know, street 3 is next to street 4 is next to street 5. Then I discovered in San Jose, 4th street is nowhere near 3rd and 5th street. Then I discovered in Denver, there are two 21st streets in different parts of town. Now I have a GPS.

showerst 15y ago
Make sure to bring it if you ever visit Washington DC, there are four of every numbered street =). (Quadrants centered on the capitol.) On the plus side they're all marked NW/NE/SW/SE, but it's an occasional tourist mistake that can land a person way off course.
- lucasjung 15y ago
  There are also really odd things like streets that seemingly dead-end, but which actually continue in the same direction but offset by one or more blocks; in other words, a street that takes a dog-leg via a crossing street. The problem is that there are almost never signs to tell you which way to turn to stay with the street you're on, or even that the street does, in fact, continue. Even with a GPS, DC can be hard to navigate because there are so many discrepancies between most map databases and the actual streets. For example, I have a relatively recent Garmin, and every time I'm in DC it tries at least once to turn me the wrong way down a one-way street, or tries to send me down a street that isn't there. The one-way streets aren't alternated logically like the ones in NW Portland, either; there may be some rhyme or reason to the one-ways, but I have yet to decipher it. Another experience I often have in DC: a street I'm on suddenly becomes one-way in the opposite direction.
  - showerst 15y ago
    Ohh yeah. Driving in DC is a nightmare in general. Thank goodness we have great mass transit in a fair portion of the city. The craziest thing is that we have lanes and even whole streets that change DIRECTION depending on the time of day/day of the week.

scraplab 15y ago

I gave a presentation about this a few years ago. It's pretty UK centric. http://tomtaylor.co.uk/talks/eight-ways-to-orientate-yourself-anywhere http://tomtaylor.co.uk/talks/eight-ways-to-orientate-yoursel...

grecy 15y ago

I just spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina, with no GPS and very basic paper maps. I don't think these tips are useful at all to someone constantly on the move in new places. I'm typically excellent with directions and only got "completely lost" a dozen times or so. (For some reason, Bolivia had me convinced North was South...) Those six methods assume a lot that doesn't work everywhere. 1. Tons of places have no satellite dishes. 2. Good idea, but you need to find a town to find a church... 3. Surely you need to be a local to know about weather patterns. 4. Assuming people have jobs, are going to work, and there is some kind of mass transit that stops at some kind of known location regularly. 5. You have to already know if you're North or South of the city.. 6. What? again, you would have to know which way is North/South before you look at the clouds.

BerislavLopac 15y ago
Well, the title does say "in the city". There are other ways to orient outside of one...

RobLach 15y ago

I'm from Chicago where the streets are gridded n/s/e/w and the addresses are numbered according to distance. "Block numbers are consistent across the whole city. Standard blocks, of 100 addresses each, are roughly 1/8th of a mile long. (Hence, a mile is equivalent to a street number difference of 800.) Each street is assigned a number based on its distance from the zero point of the address system, the intersection of State Street and Madison Street. A street with a W (west) or E (east) number runs north-south, while a street with a N (north) or S (south) number runs east-west. A street's number is usually written on street signs at intersections, below the street name. Major thoroughfares are at each mile (multiples of 800) and secondary arteries at the half-mile marks. Thus, Western Ave at 2400 W is a north-south major thoroughfare, while Montrose Ave at 4400 N is an east-west secondary artery. In general, "avenues" run north-south and "streets" run east-west." - http://wikitravel.org/en/Chicago http://wikitravel.org/en/Chicago General - http://www.chicagohomeestates.com/info/chicago_street_guide http://www.chicagohomeestates.com/info/chicago_street_guide