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If I understand correctly, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Mexico City, Tehran and St Louis have a majority streets running slightly askew from due North - South or
by merek 3y ago
If I understand correctly, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Mexico City, Tehran and St Louis have a majority streets running slightly askew from due North - South or due East - West. Any ideas why that may be the case?
- merek 3y agoI found a promising answer in a comment from "Nathan": > Most of Melbourne’s grid was laid out according to magnetic north, not true north, hence the ~8 degree rotation.
- gumby 3y agoAnd Melbourne is too lazy to update their streets as the magnetic north moves.
- pimlottc 3y agoCouldn’t they just rotate their continent? It is an island, after all.
- madcaptenor 3y agoThey try but people in Sydney keep rotating it back.
- wizardwes 3y agoCould be a variety of reasons. Maybe they point to geographic north instead of magnetic north, or it could be just simple measurement error when the city was constructed, or a natural feature of the terrain, similar to the Manhattan and Detroit graphs
- lainga 3y agoToronto is aligned to the long straight stretch of Lake Ontario's Northern shore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Ontario#/media/File:ISS-36_Lake_Ontario_(horizontal).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Ontario#/media/File:ISS-3...
- ks2048 3y agoMexico City was originally on an island [1]. I wonder if, like Manhattan, that has something to do with it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan#/media/File:Painting_of_Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco_on_Lake_Texcoco_(9755215791).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan#/media/File:Paint...)
- frogulis 3y agoAnother tidbit about Melbourne (I'm a fan): while most of greater Melbourne orients ~8 degrees clockwise of true north, the Hoddle Grid right in the middle and South Melbourne instead orient ~20 degrees counterclockwise of true north, in order to align with the adjacent stretch of the Yarra River. Naturally, as a lifelong resident, I lean 8 degrees to the right when reading any map.
- athrun 3y agoOoh. I would never had noticed. And now I can't unsee it!